These are the go-to guys and gals for IVF centers with growing pains
Four years past the labor shortages of 2021 and 2022, and fertility clinics and networks are still confronting a widening gap between the demand for A.R.T. services and the internal capacity required to manage them. Operational demands are converging at a pace most organizations were not designed to absorb. Even well-resourced networks are finding that attempting to keep every function in-house—strategy, staffing, compliance, genetics, anesthesia, lab infrastructure, and financial operations—has become impractical.
The result has revealed who fertility organizations rely on to hedge capacity shortages. Professional services firms with deep fertility-specific expertise are being embedded as extensions of the clinic or network itself.
As fertility markets consolidate and reimbursement models evolve, leadership teams are under pressure to redesign operating models while continuing to deliver consistent clinical outcomes. International expansion, private equity ownership, outcomes-linked reimbursement, and heightened competition are forcing clinics to reassess how they differentiate, allocate capital, and structure care delivery.
Going into 2026, Inside Reproductive Health readers named some of the professional services firms they can’t live without
Cedro Strategy’s work reflects this reality, focusing on diagnosing systemic bottlenecks across fertility organizations, from operating models and patient journeys to technology integration and performance measurement. Its emphasis on aligning strategy with on-the-ground execution highlights how abstract planning alone is insufficient in a field where operational missteps directly affect patients and clinicians.
Complexity in genetic counseling is pressuring patients, providers, and staff. Gene-Screen, counseled by Blue Cardinal Advisors, underscores how genetic testing has become a daily source of clinical anxiety for fertility physicians, introducing liability exposure, workflow strain, and counseling challenges that many clinics were not built to manage. As genetic test results grow more nuanced, clinics are increasingly dependent on external expertise to help stratify risk, standardize interpretation, and support decision-making without overwhelming already burdened care teams. Fertility expertise has become too specialized, and too consequential, to rely on generalist advisors.
“Externalize” Is the New Internalize
Staffing shortages in fertility care now extend well beyond embryologists and nurses, exposing structural vulnerabilities clinics cannot resolve through incremental hiring. Anesthesia coverage has become one of the most acute pressure points, with fertility centers competing against hospitals for a shrinking provider pool. More than 17% of anesthesia providers are nearing retirement, while over 50% report burnout, destabilizing coverage for time-sensitive IVF procedures and increasing cancellations, workflow disruption, and perioperative inconsistency. These failures directly affect clinical throughput, patient confidence, and day-to-day operational reliability.
In response, clinics are moving away from rotating, transactional anesthesia arrangements toward fertility-focused coverage models designed for outpatient IVF care. Kaleidoscope Anesthesia addresses this gap by embedding dedicated anesthesia teams—primarily CRNAs—within fertility practices, prioritizing continuity, reproductive-care experience, and alignment with clinic workflows. This approach stabilizes scheduling, reduces last-minute cancellations, and eases burnout across both anesthesia providers and clinic teams, improving predictability for patients and staff alike.
No matter the role, fertility centers are having a very hard time finding and retaining fertility-experienced human capital. Across clinical operations, patient support, and management employers are enduring prolonged learning curves when having to orient brand new contributors to the fertility space. Fertility Consultancy ApS addresses this challenge through fertility-specific clinic assessments, benchmarking, patient support staffing, and recruitment services. By focusing on expertise already fluent in IVF workflows, the firm helps clinics improve operational effectiveness without relying on generalist healthcare staffing models that often struggle to translate into fertility settings.
Supporting these workforce strategies is a growing reliance on external technical infrastructure. Nationwide IVF Service reflects how clinics are offloading highly specialized IVF laboratory equipment servicing and calibration rather than maintaining this expertise in-house. Nationwide’s Jean Purdy Calibration Lab is a controlled environment dedicated to the calibration of measuring instruments and equipment in Corona, CA. Its primary purpose is to maintain the traceability of measurements to national or international standards, such as those maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
EVERSANA Automates Compliance. MedTech Still the Go-To Experts For New Lab Builds
Operational strain extends beyond staffing and strategy into financial management, compliance, and physical infrastructure. MedTech For Solutions’ work illustrates how clinics are turning to fertility-specific group purchasing, lab design, temporary embryology staffing, real estate advisory, and patient financing programs to manage rising costs and operational complexity. These services address persistent blind spots—real estate expenses, capital equipment procurement, short-term staffing gaps, and patient affordability—that can quietly erode margins and limit access to care if left unmanaged.
Similarly, EVERSANA’s Donor Eligibility System and broader commercialization and patient-support infrastructure demonstrate how processes originally built for life sciences are being adapted to the fertility sector. The system is an automated, web-accessible platform that assists in the donor eligibility determination process. It is specifically designed to provide tissue organizations with the ability to fully automate the donor eligibility process in a way that is compliant with FDA 21 CFR 1271.
Professional services have become core infrastructure—embedded, fertility-specific, and deeply integrated into daily operations. The common thread--across advisory, staffing, anesthesia, lab services, and financial support--is that IVF centers flock to a handful of firms with proven experience in the fertility field.
You Can Stop Being Left Out Now, Y’Know
Next Big Exposure Before PCRS. Why miss out when you get so much for so little? 🤪
If your organization belongs to this category but wasn’t included in this “State of” report, then your competitors are dominating the attention of your customers: REIs, fertility network executives, embryologists, and others.
These same competitors will get more coverage in a report or podcast episode, about your category
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