A federal health official announces initiatives to dismantle the group’s monopoly power that has dominated the system for years.
The ailing U.S. organ transplant system will undergo a major reform, as part of which the government will dismantle the nonprofit corporation that has controlled it for the past 37 years.
If adopted, the plan would significantly alter the vast, multibillion-dollar system that transfers organs from deceased donors to critically ill patients. That system has long been deemed deficient: There are about 104,000 people waiting for organs, the majority of whom need kidney transplants; each day, 22 people pass away while waiting for transplants, with poor and minority patients typically faring worse than wealthy and White individuals.
The United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit organisation in charge of running the network, is proposing to split up responsibility for some of its operations, according to Carole Johnson, administrator of the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, which is in charge of the network. Only UNOS has ever managed the transplant system in the United States.
In an interview, she declared that she would welcome different organisations to assume control of certain places. They would submit separate bids for the contracts, establishing the transplant system’s first ever competitive environment.
According to Johnson, “Our objective is to obtain best in class for all the activities we believe are crucial to managing the transplant network.”
The network has been plagued by issues under UNOS, which has a $6.5 million yearly contract with HRSA. Too many organs are wasted, damaged in transportation, or simply not collected, malfunctioning equipment occasionally jeopardises transplants, and subpar performance face little responsibility.
A competitive bidding procedure was welcomed by UNOS, which said in a statement on Wednesday that it “supports HRSA’s strategy to incorporate significant changes into the nation’s organ donation and transplantation system.”
The statement read, “We believe we have the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively serve the nation’s patients and to assist in implementing HRSA’s planned initiatives.”
However, the federal proposal would also alter the network’s organisational structure by putting in place a strong board of directors that is independent of UNOS, creating a public dashboard for the vast amounts of data the system produces, and increasing the transparency of the occasionally opaque procedure for matching patients and organs.
For what Johnson is referring to as a “modernization” of the transplant network, the Biden administration has committed $67 million in its planned fiscal 2024 budget, roughly double the amount in the existing budget.
Making sure we are doing everything possible to improve the system that patients and families use is extremely important to us.