New Federal Rule on Organ Transplants Puts South Carolina Lives at Risk
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New Federal Rule on Organ Transplants Puts South Carolina Lives at Risk
The Times and Democrat
Daniel L. Gardner Editor’s Choice
PRINCETON, N.J. — Science in Donation & Transplant (SID&T), the New Jersey-based non-profit devoted to the support and education of members and stakeholders in the donation and transplant communities, is continuing to sound the alarm on the dangerous federal government rule that could undermine the nation’s non-profit organ donor network.
Among the OPO’s SID&T is proud to advocate alongside is We Are Sharing Hope, an organization that, through their Community Outreach Programs created and maintained in partnership with Donate Life SC, helped to inspire nearly 84,000 new donor designations in 2021.
“By judging the 57 non-profit Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) on the merits of organ donation which they control, as well as transplant rate which they do not, the rule leaves critical questions unanswered, and, if implemented as proposed, may put South Carolina lives, especially in the most vulnerable Low Country populations at risk” stated Dr. Gerald M. Wilson, chairman of SHSC.
“What Science in Donation and Transplant is doing is sounding a prescient warning on the risks of moving ahead with a federal rule that has not been thoroughly vetted by the medical experts who are also the leaders in the field of transplantation.”
“We are glad for their advocacy and believe that their efforts to coordinate a national approach to making our system even better are ones that will ultimately save more lives,” Wilson concluded.
Most alarmingly, the new CMS rule calls for the potential shutdown of many of the nation’s organ procurement non-profits with no guidance on how their out-of-state replacements will be named or, even more troubling, whether those replacements will have the same commitment to patients, as opposed to profits, that the current OPO’s now subscribe to.
Through their advocacy and outreach efforts over the past 15 months, SID&T has found ample opportunity and a yearning for increased alignment among organ procurement organizations and transplant centers. This necessary alignment, or more thorough coordination, also extends to patients and their families, like Mark Walker of Columbia, South Carolina, who, in 2017 was the recipient of a transplanted kidney.
“Organ transplant saved my life and kept my family whole,” said Mark Walker, transplant recipient of Columbia told SID&T. “Federal regulators and lawmakers need to realize that the system that kept me alive, while not perfect, can only be improved by implementing changes that are based on facts and sound scientific research, not the harvesting of data, and certainly not through a system that separates the monied haves with the financially strapped have nots.” Added Tracy Moore, CEO and executive director of Donate Life, SC, the state’s organ and tissue registry.
Additionally, the new rule makes no peer-reviewed science advances in addressing OPO performance evaluation.
“Unfortunately, politics trumped science in the adoption of new rules by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Washington, DC.” Anthony Pizzutillo, founding member of SID&T said, reissuing the organization’s call for science guided evaluation of donation and transplant. “There is no interest by some out of state politicians to help South Carolina meet new federal guidelines which themselves are based more on politics than science. They seek only to destroy the best performing organ delivery system in the world in the name of reform.”
In a separate statement, SID&T recently applauded U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Service Xavier Becerra for his unequivocal support of efforts for right-minded reform which came in the form of a rejection of the proposal by 12 members of the U.S. Congress to accelerate implementation of the 2020 rule. In doing so, Becerra also called for the release of a request for information (RFI) to consider the expert knowledge of every facet of the organ donation and transplant system.
“In responding to this RFI SID&T will be once again calling for the creation of a national task force made up of recognized scientists and community stakeholders in organ donation and transplant that will ultimately offer a peer-reviewed scientific methodology approach to provide the sound data to develop the necessary metrics for implementing an improved system,” Pizzutillo added. “This would be a welcome change from what others offered to CMS during the development of the regulations.”
“It’s time to put solid science before politics,” Pizzutillo concluded. “Lives depend on it”.
Donors and transplant recipients alike deserve a well-aligned, science-based system. We advocate in concert with leading medical practitioners for enhanced coordination and alignment among organ procurement organizations and transplant centers. Our goal is ensuring that the metrics and measures used to credential, license, designate and certify donation and transplant organizations are grounded in science and protected from political whim and private financial influence.
Originally posted on The Times and Democrat, https://thetandd.com/opinion/columnist/commentary-new-federal-rule-on-organ-transplants-puts-s-c-lives-at-risk/article_b3bae0c8-b019-5d11-927d-43eacc507130.html#tracking-source=most-popular-opinion
