Senator asks why problems missed at UC Irvine transplant facility

Associated Press

December 1, 2005

LOS ANGELES -- U.S. Sen. Charles E. Grassley wants federal officials that oversee organ transplantation to explain why regulators didn't catch the low survival rate and other problems at UCI Medical Center's liver program.

The inquiry is part of a larger review of organ transplantation nationwide by Grassley, R-Iowa, who is also targeting improprieties at St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles.

The University of California, Irvine Medical Center closed its liver transplant program last month after a federal report showed the hospital had rejected dozens of livers offered for transplantation and hadn't done enough of the procedures to meet federal standards.

More than 30 patients died while waiting for transplants by the hospital during the past two years, according to federal data.

"It appears that patients almost certainly died, whether because an organ that could have been transplanted was refused, or because the transplant team was out of practice due to the low volume of transplants," Grassley wrote in a letter Tuesday to Elizabeth Duke, administrator of the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.

UCI said it refused most of the organs because they were of poor quality. But Grassley said it appeared the reason may have been a lack of capacity to perform transplants due to personnel problems.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services found that UCI's liver program had a one-year survival rate of 68 percent to 70 percent between July 2001 and June 2004 - well below the federal requirement of 77 percent.

The hospital also performed far fewer than the 12 transplants a year required by the federal government.

The report found that UCI hadn't had a full-time liver transplant surgeon since late 2003 and had contracted with two surgeons from San Diego, about 90 miles away.

Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he was concerned that regulators did virtually nothing for more than three years after the hospital failed to meet federal Medicare standards.

Grassley asked Duke if her agency or the United Network for Organ Sharing, which runs the national organ procurement and distribution system under a federal contract, had intervened in any way.

David Bowman, a spokesman for the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, said the agency would try to address Grassley's concerns "very soon." The United Network for Organ Sharing said it was cooperating with the senator's review.

UCI has created a task force to study what went wrong with the liver program and placed Dr. Ralph Cygan, the hospital's chief executive, on paid leave during the inquiry.

Grassley is also investigating St. Vincent Medical Center, which closed its liver transplant program earlier this year after finding that doctors in 2003 gave an organ to a man who was not among the neediest patients and that staff covered it up.

Copyright © 2005 MercuryNews.com.

This article posted December 26, 2005.