Transplant Programs at Local Hospitals in Jeopardy
According to a recent article in the Washington Post, several local hospitals have performed too few transplant operations in recent years to maintain their certification.
Included among those local hospitals under scrutiny by the U.S. Centers for for Medicare and Medicaid Services are Washington Hospital Center, Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center, and Inova Fairfax Hospital. These hospitals have not performed enough transplant surgeries and are therefore under federal review. They stand to lose federal funds that support their transplant programs.
According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, one-fifth of federally funded transplant programs do not meet the government standards for competency and patient survival.
Reported in another recent article by the Los Angeles Times, Kaiser Permanente’s now-defunct San Francisco kidney transplant program failed to remove 90 deceased patients from the national waiting list for those needing organs for transplant.