Local News in Brief : UCLA Hospital OKd as Transplant Center

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has approved UCLA Medical Center as a designated heart transplant center under the federal Medicare program. Twenty-six hospitals nationwide, out of the growing number of institutions offering heart transplants, are approved under the Medicare program.

The federal criteria require a facility to have performed 12 or more transplants in each of the two preceding years, and 12 transplants before that, with an average one-year survival rate of 73% and a two-year rate of 65%. In addition to the UCLA Westwood facility, the other Medicare-approved heart transplant centers in California are Stanford University Medical Center and Pacific Presbyterian Medical Center in San Francisco.