25 August 2025
By Wesley Muller
Contribuitng Writer
(lailluminator.com) – The motivation for LOPA’s progress is a new federal rating system launched in 2022 that set strict standards for a medical specialty area that had shown little improvement in response to skyrocketing demand for organs over the past 20 years.
There are currently 56 organ procurement organizations in the United States. A 2017 study from the Bridgespan Group, a philanthropy consultancy, referred to them as “government-granted monopolies” with few incentives to improve for a lack of competition. As a result, demand for organ transplants was far outpacing the supply of organs.
The study noted 6,000 to 8,000 people died each year while on a transplant waiting list, and 28,000 available organs from deceased donors were going unused and wasted annually.
Before 2022, organ agency evaluations did a poor job of assessing their success at achieving their ultimate goal – providing organs for successful transplants – according to the Bridgespan study.
One of the old metrics was the number of organs procured per donor. A individual can donate up to eight organs, but that number tends to be less from older donors. As a result, organ agencies were pursuing younger donors while overlooking older, single-organ donors.
Another measure was the number of organs recovered per “eligible death,” which was self-reported and subject to interpretation, the study found.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services implemented new evaluation standards in 2022 that judged organ agencies based on the number of people donating at least one organ and the number of organs obtained and successfully transplanted.
The new metrics, referred to as the donation rate and the transplantation rate, led groups to focus on obtaining more organ donations. With the updated rules in place, LOPA’s decided to reform its operations. The organization identified several areas in need of improvement and began expanding their staff, Gordon said.
The first focus was referrals. LOPA learns about potential organ donors primarily through hospitals and coroners’ offices. These referrals need to come as soon as possible because it’s a race against the clock to transplant a viable organ.
“It’s really critical because it has to be timely,” Gordon said. “We needed to be present in the hospital.”
LOPA increased its hospital development staff, primarily nurses and other medical professionals who are trained and educated in organ procurement and know about the timelines and protocols. They also communicate with hospitals and doctors on identifying potential donors.
LOPA also retrained and added staff to its family services team to increase the chances that people would donate the organs of their deceased relatives. This can be the most difficult and sensitive part of the process, and it takes a special kind of person to approach a grieving family member about an organ donation, Gordon said. Family services members need to have high levels of empathy and be trained in grief support, he added.
The agency also added new life support systems to its organ recovery clinic that keep donated organs viable for extended periods.
With these changes, LOPA was able to increase its referrals, which led to more organ donations and more successful transplants, from 725 to 883 – a 22 percent increase – in just one year.
Although the 2022 federal rules have spurred a positive transformation at LOPA, organ agencies in other states have struggled under the changes.
South Carolina’s We Are Sharing Hope SC was ranked among the bottom agencies alongside LOPA back in 2023 and has continued to struggle since then, according to the South Carolina Daily Gazette.
Sharing Hope President David DeStefano has voiced concerns that the new rules unfairly fault organ procurement agencies for things that are beyond their control, such as a transplant center rejecting an organ.
A person’s age, health and manner of death – including whether they died in the hospital – all factor into the viability of their organs. Under the new rules, any person under age 75 who dies of heart failure, a loss of blood flow to the brain, drug overdose, suicide or drowning counts as a potential donor.
That puts an aging, unhealthy, rural state such as South Carolina at a disadvantage, DeStefano told the Gazette.
The new rules have prompted organ agencies to procure organs they once passed over because of a donor’s age and other health factors that might cause a recipient’s body to reject it. The Bridgespan study noted those risk-averse concerns did not correlate with better transplant outcomes. Advances in medicine and technology have increased both the number and success of transplants, the research found.
Just last year, doctors in Missouri successfully transplanted a liver from a 98-year-old man to a 72-year-old woman, according to The Associated Press.
In the last federal review, Sharing Hope was listed among 10 organ agencies at risk of losing their certification. The same list included LOPA at the time, but next year’s review will look very different for Louisiana, Gordon said.
“We had to experiment,” he said. “But we took intelligent risks to improve.”
This article originally published in the August 25, 2025 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.