Patients still in the dark seven months after Nashville fertility clinic closed

Some patients of a Nashville, Tennessee, fertility clinic are still unable to access their frozen gametes, embryos and medical records, seven months after it closed, in April this year, media has reported.

Many patients learned of the Centre for Reproductive Health (CRH) clinic's closure on the news, or after calling up when they received a recorded message announcing the closure. Tennessee Fertility Institute, the clinic now storing gametes and embryos from the CRH, said in early November that it has completed an inventory audit. However it is not clear whether the remaining samples are still viable and, according to Fox Nashville, the court-appointed receiver is doubtful that the CRH's medical record-keeping was accurate enough to ensure genetic material can be returned to the rightful owners. 

So far, patients have been unable to get responses to queries about how to recover their frozen embryos and gametes and now understand they are unlikely to get their money back. 'He's taken our last two chances. Until we have [our] money back or the embryos back there isn't a next step for us. There isn't anything we can do at this point,' Erin Meyer, a former patient along with her husband Gregor Meyer, told Fox Nashville. She revealed they had taken money out of their retirement plan to pay for their final round of IVF.

The CRH had faced significant financial issues leading to its eventual collapse. Following the closure the Tennessee Attorney General's Office asked director of the clinic Dr Jaime Vasquez to pause filing for bankruptcy until the patients had been reunited with their genetic material. The Tennessee Attorney General's Office filed a complaint for a temporary restraining order on Dr Vasquez and his businesses outlining alleged mismanagement and deceit two weeks after the collapse of the clinic. His businesses include the clinic, other labs and 'embryo adoption' programmes which he ran.

The complaint alleges several violations of the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act including the endangerment of frozen eggs, sperm and embryos, and the failure to provide continuity of care for patients. 

In a court statement in August 2024 by Dr Vasquez accused a handful of former employees of financial mismanagement, The Cut reported. Alongside this, the clinic is also facing allegations of having an unqualified doctor working in the clinic, Fox Nashville reported.

The state of Tennessee agreed in October 2024 to pay the US $1.65 million legal fees associated with the court-appointed receiver and team of lawyers the Tennessee Attorney General's Office have brought in to wind down the clinic. This will also cover the cost of transferring all the embryos to another fertility clinic to store them free of charge for six months. 

However, the funds will not cover damages for loss suffered by individual patients. Peter Griggs, one of the attorneys working on the case stated that they 'have no reason to think that there's going to be assets available for distribution to claimants', 5 Channel News reported.