Organ donation is under threat
Lee L. lost his 31-year-old son Adam to a brain aneurism in 2012. Lee’s only consolation was that Adam’s too-short life became a gift to Daryl K., then dying of kidney disease. But the national organ donation system that made Adam’s gift possible, gave life to Daryl and helped Lee overcome his unspeakable pain is under threat from new federal regulations. We need your help to end the threat.
Across the U.S. and for more than 40 years, organ donations and transplants have been orchestrated by our nation’s 58 Organ Procurement Organizations, a network of federally-funded, community-based organizations that make tens of thousands of transplants happen every year. Tennessee is served by the seasoned and compassionate professionals at Tennessee Donor Services. If you know someone who’s had a transplant, odds are high TDS made it happen.
Yet the future of Organ Procurement Organizations like TDS is in jeopardy. The new rules aim to decertify organizations judged to be low-performing but defines “low performing” based on arbitrary benchmarks determined by faulty data from a single report concocted by a special-interest group. These rules could blow holes in the system. People in need of transplants will fall through those holes.
Organ Procurement Organizations are integral to a complex network that includes donor hospitals, transplant hospitals, medical examiners, grieving families and more. As many as 200 people can be involved in facilitating organ donation, and the organizations are the linchpin holding them all together. De-certification would create chaos, and without a back-up plan, lives would be lost.
This will result in fewer stories like Lee’s, Adam’s and Daryl’s, which required exceptional expertise to make happen. As soon as the Organ Procurement Organization network was made aware that Adam’s organs were available for transplant, it immediately initiated the delicate and detailed process required to save lives. Procurement professionals contacted Lee, in the depths of his grief, to walk him through what was about to happen. Then within hours, Daryl was notified, rushed to a hospital where a transplant team was waiting for him, and wheeled into surgery to receive Adam’s gift.
Entire system should be the focus
Yes, a few of the organizations can improve, and our system ensures that those having issues get the support they need to do better. And yes, the federal government should review and update the rules governing them, but this should be done to improve the entire system. Organ donation and transplantation seem like miracles of modern medicine, but they are not. They don’t just happen. Hundreds of people and myriad organizations are involved in every single one. In order to improve it – ensuring it employs best practices, keeps pace with transplant innovations and embraces new technologies – we must carefully examine all its aspects and assess how to make our system, acknowledged as the best in the world, better in every respect – procurement organizations included, not the procurement organizations only.
So please help us make this approach the guiding principle for advancing our organ donation and transplantation system. Given that new rules are under consideration, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lift our system to unprecedented heights of life-saving effectiveness. But it will only happen if the public demands it. Call your Congressional representatives today and ask them to advocate for a comprehensive evaluation of our donation and transplantation system that involves all stakeholders and holds every facet of the system to the very highest standards. Donor families and transplant recipients deserve no less.
Jill Grandas is the executive director of Tennessee Donor Services.