Health Resource Services Administration releases plan for organ transplant network reform
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Key takeaways:
Reform efforts include separate contracts for IT services and a board of directors independent of the contractor for organ procurement services.
More funding will be available to cover multiple contracts.
The Health Resources and Services Administration has released details on efforts to reform the U.S. organ procurement network, including modernizing IT services and creating an independent board to monitor the performance of contractors.
“For the more than 100,000 patients on the organ waitlist and their families, the time for reform is now,” HRSA Administrator Carole Johnson said in a press release.
Johnson outlined a series of reforms that are part of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) Modernization Initiative. Funding for the reform efforts is part of President Biden’s fiscal year 2024 budget. He signed into law the Securing the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network Act in September 2023, which allows HRSA to award multiple grants, contracts or cooperative agreements to operate the OPTN.
“The steps we at HRSA are taking today demonstrate our commitment to a more fair, well-managed, and high functioning organ transplant system in this country,” Johnson said in the release. “Patients in need of organ transplant, their families and people who have committed to being organ donors deserve no less.”
The reform efforts include the following:
- HRSA is issuing requests for proposals (RFPs) to support multiple contract awards to manage the OPTN, including steps to “modernize the critical organ matching technology while increasing transparency and accountability by issuing new data reporting requirements to better address pre-waitlist and organ procurement practices,” according to the release. “This important work on ‘pre-waitlist’ practices will help address inequities in the transplant waitlist process by reducing racial and ethnic variation both in patient referrals and in organ procurement.”
- Vendors will need to review and map “legacy OPTN operations approaches and [identify] actionable reforms to improve patient outcomes, system functionality, and system accountability through open competition and heightened HRSA oversight,” according to the release.
- Vendors will also need to develop and implement processes and metrics for monitoring and measuring patient safety, as well as OPTN member performance and “compliance across all OPTN membership types and phases of the organ donation, procurement, waitlist, matching, transportation, and transplantation processes with a focus on improving patient, donor and donor family experience,” according to the release.
- Create an OPTN board of directors independent from other OPTN contractors. “To improve OPTN fairness, provide independent governance, and ensure strong conflict of interest requirements for the board, HRSA is separating the board of directors, implementing robust new requirements to ensure the independence of the new board, and issuing a solicitation for a nonprofit entity with expertise in governance and process improvement to support the independent OPTN board,” according to the release.
HRSA is awaiting final fiscal year 2024 appropriations before it can award contracts, the agency said. “HRSA’s fiscal year 2024 budget proposes a $36 million increase over fiscal year 2023 to support these modernization efforts,” according to the release.
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