HHS releases public tool to crack down on out-of-order organ transplants

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, announced a new dashboard on Monday designed to increase public transparency of government partnerships with medical facilities to manage organ transplants.

The surveillance tool would help HHS monitor noncompliance with the order of waitlisted patients. Currently, many medical facilities routinely disregard the waitlist order. This practice leads to the waste of donated organs and unfairly circumvents waitlists designed to prioritize patients who need transplants the most, according to HHS.

Tom Engels, an administrator with the Health Resources and Services Administration, said the dashboard would help the government take a step towards needed clarity about where precious organs are going and how they are used. Every patient and family waiting for a transplant deserves a fair, transparent, and accountable process, Engels said in a statement. He went on to characterize the new dashboard as a concrete step toward increased transparency, earned trust, and saved lives. It would do that by shining a light on potential disruptions of the waitlist order, enabling patients, healthcare workers, and researchers to spot patterns, correct problems, and continuously improve the system, he said.

Why would a hospital circumvent a waitlist? In the past, care providers have purposefully disregarded the waitlist order in an effort to deliver transplants to patients faced with challenges related to donor-recipient compatibility, the location of an organ, and time sensitivity. Some advocates of the practice argue that it endows providers with a degree of flexibility the waitlist doesn’t account for.

Conversely, HHS argues that even in situations when the waitlist order is flagrantly disregarded, organs routinely go to waste, and in the process, federal laws and policies governing transplants are violated.

What does the dashboard do? The tool allows users to filter instances when the waitlist order was disregarded by time across more than 50 organizations that manage transplants. According to the dashboard, the practice occurred at a rate of 15% nationwide last month.

The data also displays the number of donated organs that ultimately go unused which, as of June, hovers at 17.7%.

Dig deeper: HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised a slew of reforms to the federal government’s collaboration with the medical sector. You can listen to my report of some of the key objectives Kennedy highlighted as priorities earlier this year.