The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has launched an effort to reform the organ transplant system after it was discovered that hospitals have allowed the procurement process to begin while patients still show signs of life.
The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) examined 351 cases where organ donation was not completed, finding 103 cases where 73 patients had “neurological signs incompatible with organ donation,” HHS explained. At least 28 patients were found not to have been deceased at the time procurement started.
“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “The organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants will be held accountable. The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.”
HHS added that the findings confirm the Trump administration’s concerns that “entrenched bureaucracies, outdated systems, and reckless disregard for human life have failed to protect our most vulnerable citizens.” The department pledged to restore “integrity and transparency to organ procurement and transplant policy by putting patients’ lives first,” a move it claimed was critical to “restoring trust, ensuring informed consent, and protecting the rights and dignity of prospective donors and their families.”
The HHS initiative follows a report from The New York Times, which discovered that some hospitals are “allowing procurement organizations to influence treatment decisions.” The report detailed that some organ procurement organizations, many of which have federal contracts to coordinate transplants, are “aggressively pursuing circulatory death donors and pushing families and doctors toward surgery.”
Fifty-five medical workers told the outlet they saw “at least one disturbing case of donation after circulatory death.”
