Health Officials Expand Organ Transplant Oversight With New Public Dashboard

‘Every patient and family waiting for a transplant deserves a fair, transparent, and accountable process,’ Tom Engels, one of the health officials, stated.

A kidney is sewn into a recipient patient during a kidney transplant at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, June 26, 2012. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/GettyImages

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.”