Lawmakers Delay Reform of Organ Transplant Rules

A regulation that would send scarce organs to the sickest transplant patients first will be delayed for at least another year under an agreement reached Thursday in the final hours of negotiations on a massive budget bill.

The delay was a defeat for the Clinton administration, which issued the regulations in April attempting to take more control over the United Network for Organ Sharing, which runs the nation’s transplant system.

The network immediately mounted a lobbying campaign to overturn the rules, mobilizing transplant surgeons and hospitals across the country to phone their members of Congress. The network insists that it should be able to write its own policies without government interference or approval.

The budget bill calls for the Institute of Medicine to study the complex issues surrounding organ allocation and issue a report by May.

In a small victory for the administration, the network must release timely and accurate information about the performance of transplant programs. The network has resisted releasing information about its members.

The Department of Health and Human Services complains that people are dying simply because of where they live under the network’s rules. The system gives priority to patients who live close to where the donor died, even if there is someone sicker elsewhere.

More than 4,000 people die each year waiting for a transplant.

The transplant issue was tacked onto a House bill with strong backing from Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Like other transplant programs, hospitals in Louisiana want to preserve the current system. They fear that under the new rules, organs donated locally would be siphoned off to hospitals in other states that attract sicker patients, leaving the Louisiana programs without organs to transplant.