Federal health officials have released a new dashboard that tracks when organ transplants take place outside the list of matched patients, saying it will help them crack down on deviations in the transplant process.
When organs are identified for transplant, a computer runs a program that ranks patients using factors such as medical urgency and distance from donors. If the order is not followed, then the situation is labeled an “allocation out of sequence.”
The dashboard will track these events, which will enable officials to “crack down on noncompliance and give patients, families, and clinicians clear information about whether the system is operating fairly,” the Department of Health and Human Services said in an Aug. 27 statement….