Firstly, Rejoice IVF Lab is a Joint Commission accredited IVF lab which means we have undergone a detailed and comprehensive evaluation process to ensure that we are following best practices in all aspects of our IVF Program.

Secondly, we have robust protocols when embryos arrive in Knoxville via Cryoport, the world leader in embryo shipping, to verify each and every embryo storage device upon arrival to our facility. Arriving embryos must be accurately tracked in an inventory and we track our inventory both using paper charts (yes, very Old School), but also in an excel inventory that is backed up onto an encrypted cloud service. A monthly manual backup of our electronic files is performed by our Senior Embryologist Sarah Atkinson onto an encrypted flash drive just in case all other methods of redundancy were to fail.

Thirdly, our embryo storage tanks are double alarmed with both temperature alarms, and thermal imagining alarms for early detection of a tank failure. All alarms will call out to our personal cell phones of the lab staff of 5 including Dr Gordon if anything goes wrong, ensuring we have 365 days/24 hours a day ability to respond with a human to an emergency. Additionally, our tanks are examined by one of our embryologists (as opposed to relying on electronic means that could fail) 3x per week to test their liquid nitrogen levels. The tanks are normally filled by lab personnel on a weekly or biweekly basis as needed. Our thermal imaging cameras have a twice a day sign off when we are in the lab to ensure tank temperatures are holding steady, and a phone app that we can check on them if we aren’t here.

Fourthly, we perform both physical tank canister inventories, as well as cross referencing with the paper files to ensure an accurate inventory. We confirm these with photographs of the cane tabs, then cross reference the photographs across our excel inventory.

Lastly prior to an actual thaw, embryo storage devices are checked and double-checked at least 2 technicians witnessing and verifying with their signatures the identification of the embryos before they are thawed. The physician performing the embryo transfer must sign off on the identification of the devices before the transfer occurs. The devices from the thawed embryos remain attached to the embryology records. Finally, none of Rejoice IVF Lab’s embryologist have ever been party to any mix-up, misidentification, mislabeling, or miscount of embryos.