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SID&T Reform 2025: Patient And Donor Family Focused

The case for rescinding the organ donation governing rule is irrefutable at this stage.  Simply put, flawed healthcare rules literally kill patients.

There is a documented poor record of regulatory overreach and abject failure of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to manage and evaluate the Organ Procurement Organization system.[1]  As long predicted by SID&T, HHS and CMS bureaucratic failure in this regard is now resulting in federal court litigation.

Rescinding the Rule

The rule should be rescinded. HHS does not arbitrarily shut up to 70% of the nation’s so-called underperforming hospitals by judging their performance on flawed metrics[2]. A major concern with the final rule at issue is that the current measures place great importance on results that OPO cannot fully control, with no means of accounting for that dynamic.  Specifically, one of the revised measures is the number of organs transplanted, but the ultimate decision to transplant an organ (or not) does not rest with an OPO.  An OPO can perform all its tasks to ready an organ for transplants and physicians and/or transplant centers can decide not to transplant the organ at their sole discretion such that the organ is then not transplanted.

Effective Oversight

 Importantly, HHS while retaining oversight, takes hospital accreditation out of the bureaucracy and into the hands of third-party professionals and demands any necessary remedial action based on best practices. This is the responsible path forward for optimal patient outcomes.

1. https://sidandt.org/news/latest-news/the-repetitive-history-of-cms-failing-patients-and-donors-with-flawed-performance-metrics-for-organ-procurement-organizations

2. https://sidandt.org/the-science/peer-reviewed-science