Organ Transplant Groups Seek to Alter Trump-Era Procurement Rule

The nation’s transplant medical community is calling on the Biden administration to rework a Trump-era organ procurement rule that they say would be detrimental to the donation process.

The rule (RIN 0938-AU02) is designed to make more human organs available for transplant and imposes tougher quality requirements for procurement organizations to receive federal reimbursement. But the rule also “injects forced competition” by requiring those groups to “compete for their service area, rather than be automatically recertified,” according to a comment letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Adding “market-based, corporate-style competition” to the procurement process “is unsupported by ...