Monash IVF’s recent settlements arising from serious embryo transfer errors highlight the increasing operational, governance and risk challenges facing IVF providers as patient numbers and long-term storage demands continue to grow.
Following our June 2025 article Woman gives birth to stranger’s baby – Monash IVF’s error after error causing mistrust in the industry, Australia’s leading IVF provider, Monash IVF, has now taken steps to settle with families affected by one of the most significant mishaps in the industry last year.
In February 2025, Monash IVF acknowledged that it had mistakenly implanted a Brisbane patient with another woman’s embryo, resulting in the patient giving birth to a child to whom she was not genetically related. This incident was followed by another error in Melbourne, where a woman’s own embryo was incorrectly transferred to her, rather than her partner’s embryo – contrary to the treatment plan.
These events led the fertility group to initiate an independent review, which concluded that human error was responsible in both cases - alongside IT system limitations in the Melbourne incident. The commissioning and scope of the review were formally acknowledged by the company, although detailed findings were not released publicly.
In a statement provided to the media, a spokesperson from Monash IVF publicly apologised for the company’s mistakes and stated that the organisation had ‘taken significant steps to strengthen our safety culture and enhance oversight across all sites’. The spokesperson added, ‘patients can be confident that we have learned from these events and taken decisive steps to ensure our systems are as rigorous and robust as possible’.
Monash IVF has not disclosed the value of the settlements, which is not unexpected, given the confidential nature of settlement agreements of this kind.
The IVF process
According to Monash IVF,1 each IVF cycle costs from anywhere between $10,950.00 to $12,063.00. In addition, the cost of elective egg freezing is $5,000, plus a $918 freezing fee. In 2023 alone, over 112,000 IVF cycles were performed,2 shedding light on the level of reliance on this multi-billion-dollar global industry.
For women under the age of 35, the chance of a successful pregnancy is approximately 51% after one IVF cycle, and 80% after three cycles. For women over the age of 35, the success rate is only around 28% after one cycle, and 52% after three cycles.3
As IVF treatment does not always result in a successful outcome, failed cycles can carry both substantial financial and emotional costs.
Implications for you
Despite these outcomes, the number of patients seeking IVF treatment and fertility preservation has been on the rise. The number of IVF patients (and accordingly, the number of eggs) has increased exponentially, which has led to some fertility clinics facing a storage crisis.
Dr Molly Johnston, a research fellow at the Monash Bioethics Centre at Monash University, reports that the number of egg-freezing cycles carried out in Australia and New Zealand between 2011 and 2021 increased by more than 1,500%.4
Only around 10% of women return to use their frozen eggs, as according to data, most women can conceive without relying on IVF, and only freeze their eggs as a fallback. This has led to fertility clinics seeking to expand their storage facilities as the number of frozen eggs is rapidly surpassing the number of eggs being removed from storage.5
In NSW, section 25 of the Assisted Reproductive Technology Act 2007 (NSW) provides that gametes (e.g. eggs and sperm) and embryos can only be stored for up to 15 years. After this date, patients have one of three options:
- to discard the gametes or embryos
- to donate them to research, or
- to donate them to another patient.
For many patients, this length of time may be too short, especially if they froze their gametes or embryos at an early age (for example, prior to chemotherapy). However, extending the period for which clinics must store eggs and embryos will only put further pressure on the storage crisis.
As IVF and egg freezing continue to expand as highly sought‑after forms of medical treatment (and, for many patients, the only viable pathway to conception), the pace of change within the sector is creating increasingly complex challenges that must be addressed in order to mitigate ongoing risk, and the prospect of costly litigation.
IVF providers should take notes from these incidents and use this opportunity to review internal systems, consent processes and incident response frameworks.
A Rapid Review of Assisted Reproductive Technology and In Vitro Fertilisation Regulation and Accreditation in Australia was conducted by Professor Euan M Wallace AM and the Victorian Department of Health, with the final report published in September 2025.6 The report made a number of recommendations, including that:
- an independent accreditation be pursued through the existing national health care accreditation body, the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care
- consistent registration and reporting requirements be imposed by individual State and Territory regulatory authorities
- consumers are better supported to use existing complaints handling bodies and processes, and that
- ART providers, the accreditor, regulators, and complaints handling bodies share complaints data.
Whilst it is a thoughtful first step in the right direction, the review fails to address how these recommendations will be implemented, and how IVF providers will be held accountable if they do not adhere to the new regulations.
1 IVF Costs in Australia - Fertility Treatment Pricing | Monash IVF
2 IVF statistics in Australia and New Zealand | YourIVFSuccess
3 IVF success rates: how successful is IVF? | The University of Melbourne
4 More people are freezing their eggs to preserve their fertility but some IVF clinics are struggling to keep up with storage | ABC News
5 Ibid
6 Rapid Review of Assisted Reproductive Technology and In Vitro Fertilisation Regulation and Accreditation in Australia | Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing
