Rationing Lives: Organ Transplant Programs -- latimes.com

San Diego hospital suspends heart transplants

UC San Diego Medical Center announced Friday that it was voluntarily shutting its heart transplant program — at least temporarily — amid a federal review of transplant centers that fall below performance standards. More...

Transplant center survival statistics: Lung

Below are transplant centers whose patient survival rates exceeded or fell short of expectations. Not listed are transplant centers that met survival expectations--which factor in the condition of patients and donated organs. More...

Transplant center survival statistics: Kidney-pancreas

Below are transplant centers whose patient survival rates exceeded or fell short of expectations. Not listed are transplant centers that met survival expectations--which factor in the condition of patients and donated organs. More...

Transplant center survival statistics: Kidney

Below are transplant centers whose patient survival rates exceeded or fell short of expectations. Not listed are transplant centers that met survival expectations--which factor in the condition of patients and donated organs. More...

Transplant center survival statistics: Liver

Below are transplant centers whose patient survival rates exceeded or fell short of expectations. Not listed are transplant centers that met survival expectations--which factor in the condition of patients and donated organs. More...

Transplant center survival statistics: Heart

Below are transplant centers whose patient survival rates exceeded or fell short of expectations. Not listed are transplant centers that met survival expectations--which factor in the condition of patients and donated organs. More...

How old is too old for a transplant?

It was Monday, Shawn Stringfellow's usual night to shoot pool. More...

TIMES INVESTIGATION

Transplant monitor lax in oversight

The little-known organization that oversees the nation's organ transplant system often fails to detect or decisively fix problems at derelict hospitals — even when patients are dying at excessive rates, a Times investigation has found. More...

Transfer of Kaiser's Kidney Patients Hits Major Delays

California HMO regulators said this week that it will take months longer than expected to transfer about 2,000 patients out of Kaiser Permanente's troubled kidney transplant center in San Francisco, prolonging patients' dependence on a program that has been plagued by scandal. More...

List Of Transplant Facilities Not Meeting Standards

To qualify for Medicare funding, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requires transplant centers to perform a certain number of transplants annually and achieve a specific unadjusted survival rate for patients one year after surgery. Transplant programs at the following hospitals failed to meet one or both of the standards. More...

USC Center Is Latest With Transplant Woes

The liver transplant program at USC University Hospital in Los Angeles has one of the highest death rates in the nation, with twice as many patients as expected dying after their surgeries, according to data released this week. More...

Report on Transplant Programs Prompts Inquiry by U.S. Senator

A prominent U.S. senator asked federal officials Thursday to explain why they haven't acted against nearly 50 transplant centers nationwide that fail to meet federal benchmarks for patient survival and the number of transplants performed. More...

A TIMES INVESTIGATION

20% of U.S. Transplant Centers Are Found to Be Substandard

About a fifth of federally funded transplant programs fail to meet the government's minimum standards for patient survival or perform too few operations to ensure competency, a Los Angeles Times investigation has found. More...

U.S. Berates Kaiser Over Kidney Effort

Virtually every part of Kaiser Permanente's massive kidney transplant program in San Francisco failed patients, according to a scathing federal report released Friday. More...

Kaiser Halts Kidney Venture

Kaiser Permanente announced Friday that it was indefinitely suspending its kidney transplant program in Northern California after revelations that it had endangered hundreds of patients. More...

TRANSPLANT INEQUALITY | A Times Special Report

Death by Geography

In the world of organ transplantation, location is everything. More...

Kaiser Official Apologizes

OAKLAND -- Kaiser Permanente's top official in Northern California publicly apologized Wednesday to patients who felt that their complaints about the giant HMO's new kidney transplant center had been ignored -- but emphasized that the problems came as a surprise to her. More...

State Steps In on Kaiser Transplants

The state's top HMO regulator said late Tuesday that Kaiser Permanente would pay for kidney transplants at outside hospitals for patients dissatisfied with Kaiser's troubled new transplant program in Northern California. More...

Kaiser Transplant Patients Express Their Fear and Fury

"I don't know what's going on here," Bernard Burks wrote to Kaiser Permanente's kidney transplant program last October, "but whatever it is, it's wrong." More...

Kaiser Slow to Transfer Patients

Kaiser Permanente launched its massive kidney transplant program in 2004 without holding basic discussions with regulators about how to safely transfer up to 1,500 of its patients from other programs to its San Francisco center, according to a Times investigation. More...

Kaiser Denied Transplants of Ideally Matched Kidneys

Twenty-five Kaiser Permanente patients in Northern California were denied the chance for new kidneys that were nearly perfectly matched to them last year during the troubled start-up of the giant HMO's kidney transplant program in San Francisco, a Times investigation has found. More...

Kaiser Put Kidney Patients at Risk

In mid-2004, more than 1,500 Kaiser Permanente patients awaiting kidney transplants in Northern California got form letters that forced them to change the course of their treatment. More...

Hospital's Kidney Transplant Death Rate Raises Concerns

Kidney transplant patients at St. Vincent Medical Center have died at a higher-than-expected rate over the last several years, raising questions about the quality of care at one of the nation's oldest and busiest transplant programs. More...

Liver Unit Suffered in Silence

Dr. Sean Cao, the lone transplant surgeon employed by UCI Medical Center, was typing at his computer around midnight. More...

Congressman Expands Probe Into Organ Transplant Centers

A prominent U.S. senator is broadening his investigation into problems at organ transplant centers around the nation, asking why authorities failed to detect problems in the liver program at UCI Medical Center. More...

THE STATE

How a Liver Unit Failed

For at least four years, UCI Medical Center officials and employees knew that liver transplant candidates were dying while the program turned down a huge portion of donated organs it was offered. More...

The State

Hospital Halts Liver Transplant Program

UCI Medical Center said late Thursday that it would stop performing liver transplants, hours after the federal government stripped the program's certification and said the hospital was imperiling patients' prospects for survival. More...

Organs Refused While Patients Die

Over the last two years, more than 30 people died awaiting liver transplants at UCI Medical Center in Orange as the hospital turned down scores of organs that might have saved them, according to a federal report. More...

THE STATE

Deception Behind Liver-Transplant Switch Proved to Be Fatal

In January 2003, after more than two years on a waiting list for a liver transplant, Saad Al-Harthi was finally considered sick enough to rank near the top. More...

Hospital Halts Organ Program

St. Vincent Medical Center, one of the largest organ transplantation centers in the state, has suspended its liver program after discovering that its doctors improperly arranged for a transplant to a Saudi national using an organ that should have gone to a much higher priority patient at another hospital, officials said. More...