UCI Fertility Center Closes, Will Move to Fountain Valley

UCI’s controversial Center for Reproductive Health closed Friday, as workers packed up office supplies and equipment to move to a new center that will no longer be affiliated with the university.

University officials have terminated their five-year affiliation with the clinic, run by well-known fertility doctors Ricardo H. Asch, Jose P. Balmaceda and Sergio Stone. UCI has sued the physicians, accusing them of misconduct, which the trio has repeatedly denied.

On Friday, staff members saw their last patients at the clinic and remained cloistered in the dimly lit office, declining to comment. Workers pushed out carts of cardboard boxes and stacked them inside a U-Haul truck outside.

A UCI police officer was stationed outside the gray, two-story medical building, as workers prepared to move into an office in Fountain Valley.

A spokeswoman for the Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center said administrators at the Center for Reproductive Health signed a lease starting Thursday for a 1,900-square-feet space in one of the medical center’s four office buildings. She said the space is not equipped for in-vitro fertilization procedures.

“They plan to see patients there, but in terms of an IVF [in-vitro fertilization] lab, there is none there,” said Cathy Capaldi, director of business development for the Fountain Valley hospital. She would not disclose the lease’s duration.

The doctors will not be able to use hospital facilities for procedures, Capaldi said.

Doctors ordinarily have to go through 60 to 90 days of a credentialing program to use the hospital. But the fertility team will not be allowed to do so because of the ongoing investigations into their research practices, said Richard Butler, the hospital’s chief executive officer.

Fertility specialists will continue to treat patients at their satellite clinic at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills, Fountain Valley hospital officials have said.

The Fountain Valley office will be in a four-story building that is separate from the hospital, Capaldi said. The hospital currently does not have its own in-vitro fertilization facilities, she said.

Butler said the hospital’s obstetrics department doctors will meet soon to discuss other fertility clinics and doctors they may recruit to bring in-vitro fertilization services to their medical center.