Reported by NPR Health
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The U.S. organ transplant system is making a controversial change to a long-standing rule that was designed to protect potential donors. The revision aims to boost donations and reduce errors. But critics worry that the move may endanger patient care.
Under the change, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network , which runs the transplant system, will relax a strict firewall between the doctors and nurses trying to save patients in the hospital and the transplantation team standing by to procure patients' organs.
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Previously, no one from that team was even supposed to talk to family members until after they had made the heart-wrenching decision to let a loved one go. The rule was intended to prevent pressure that could change the care patients receive. It was also in place to dispel any doubts that doctors aren't doing everything they can to save patients.
But the board of directors for the transplant system voted Aug. 20 to modify that rule as part of a new set of guidelines governing donation following circulatory death . That occurs after life-sustaining care has been withdrawn and now accounts for about half of organ donations.
The new rules, which go into effect Nov. 18, "allow discussions for organ donation to take place once end of life discussions are taking place with the potential deceased donor's agent," according to the new policy.
Why is the firewall previously barring these conversations coming down?
"I think the best way to think about it is that insisting on a bright line without focusing on what's happening on either side of that line is a false sense of security," Dr. Raymond Lynch, the director of transplantation at the Health Resources & Services Administration , the federal agency that oversees the organ network, told NPR in an interview.
The new rules aim to prevent disturbing mistakes that have occurred in the past. Those errors have included patients being wheeled into operating rooms to remove their organs when they were still alive.
"That specific line in the policy is…