US Proposes New Rules to Increase Organ Transplants

An Associated Press analysis recently found some of the groups that collect organs at death secure donors at half the rate of others, causing missed opportunities that could have saved lives. The organ shortage in America is so severe that more than 113,000 Americans linger on the transplant waiting list — and about 20 die each day. On Tuesday, the government proposed rules that would overhaul parts of the transplant system to make sure organs from the dead no longer go to waste as well as make it easier for the living to donate.

These rules include allowing donors to be reimbursed for lost wages and child care or elder care expenses incurred during their hospitalization and recovery. Currently, the organ recipient’s insurance pays the donor’s medical bills, but they are still out of work for quite some time. Medicare will also be able to rank an organ procurement organization’s, or OPOs, performance of organ collection by using federal death records that show the entire pool of potential donors each has to draw from, which includes anyone 75 or younger who dies in a hospital of conditions that would not automatically preclude donation.

Medicare chief Seema Verma estimated the change could spark another 5,000 transplants a year. A 2017 study by University of Pennsylvania researchers had estimated that a better-functioning system could yield as many as 28,000 additional organs.

See Lauran Neergaard, US Proposes New Rules to Increase Organ Transplants, Associate Press, December 12, 2019.