Congress and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Misled on Organ Donation and Transplant

Home / News / Latest News / Congress and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Misled on Organ Donation and Transplant

SID&T PRESS RELEASE:

Congress and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services being Misled on Organ Donation and Transplant

Science in Donation and Transplant presents Congress fact-based testimony to save lives.

Washington, D.C., December 2, 2025 — To the great detriment of over 100,000 patients on the organ transplant waiting list, a Congressional committee has once again held a hearing, ignoring evidence-based, peer-reviewed lifesaving science. False narratives are misleading policy makers.

Today’s House Way and Means Oversight Subcommittee hearing failed to recognize that organ donation, the foundation of the US’ global leadership in life-saving transplants, is on the verge of potential chaos in 2026 because the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) fatally flawed decertification rule, will wrongly close up to 70% of the nonprofit Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) that provide all organs to transplant patients throughout the country..

Concerns and facts that Congress should focus on:

• CMS and Congress should now stop the years-long tradition of ignoring evidence-based peer-reviewed science that exposes the flaws in the performance metrics for OPOs. Sound science will lead to life saving policy improvements. https://sidandt.org/the-science/peer-reviewed-science

• Independent transplant and donation leaders, as well as the researchers who authored critical studies of the Final Rule, have never been invited to speak at a Congressional hearing to present and defend their findings?

• As we head into an uncertain 2026 for patients, Congress and CMS should finally address a history of bureaucratic overreach and failure. https://sidandt.org/news/latest-news/the-repetitive-history-of-cms-failing-patients-and-donors-with-flawed-performance-metrics-for-organ-procurement-organizations

• The US system leads the world (as Administrator OZ has pointed out) for fourteen consecutive years of record increases in deceased donation, including 48,149 transplants in 2024 alone. OPOs have increased kidney offers to transplant centers by 58% over the last 4 years.

• Congress is unknowingly promoting the agenda of a for-profit takeover plan of the non-profit organ recovery system.

• CMS needs to implement the NASEM recommendations mandated by Congress.

“Unfortunately, the current Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rule offers no meaningful support to help procurement organizations improve or adopt best practices. But there is no evidence to suggest that more than half of these essential organizations should be dismantled, especially not while progress is accelerating at the local level.” https://sidandt.org/news/latest-news/a-wrong-fix-for-tampa Anthony Watkins, M.D., is the surgical director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Center at Tampa General Hospital (the nation’s leading transplant hospital in 2024)

“Our government regulators have not been very good partners for donation and transplant as the mounting experience shows. At the same time, Congress, while ignoring serious subjects such as the NASEM report, settled for unrepresentative testimony that would spur sensational headlines, instead of true policy progress. “Matthew Cooper Chief of Transplantation, Director of Solid Organ Transplant at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Mark B. Adams Distinguished Professor of Surgery. Dr. Cooper is an UNOS/OPTN Past President

“CMS successfully uses independent professional survey and accrediting bodies for hospital oversight and accreditation. The same tools could be applied to the organ procurement organizations. Experience from the donation and transplant professionals should guide policy.” Anne Murphy, MBA FACHE Consultant and former Chief Administrative Officer, Department of Learning Health Sciences University of Michigan Medical School, and Transplant Center Administrative Director – University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers

Finally, SID&T’s attached testimony submission addresses the misinformation about the system spread by the Organize representative Jennifer Erickson.,

Further we address out of context audit claims.

Oversight should target actual wrongdoing, not rely on isolated, dated findings to justify broad structural conclusions.