Ownership Society

Cookie Jill at skippy's place points to an LA Pravda article:

The national group that oversees organ transplants placed UCI Medical Center on probation Thursday after a scandal that closed its liver transplant program, but stopped short of a more severe penalty that could have closed other transplant services.

This marks just the second time the United Network for Organ Sharing, a federal contractor, has publicly disciplined a transplant center. The probationary status means the UC Irvine hospital, in Orange, will be allowed to continue performing kidney and pancreas transplants but will have to ensure that it has adequate staffing and meets patient care standards. The probation will last until UCI can show it has corrected its problems...

UCI closed its liver transplant program in November after The Times reported that 32 patients had died awaiting operations in 2004 and 2005, when the hospital turned down scores of organs, sometimes because no surgeon was available. Though the hospital often cited poor organ quality or patient unsuitability in the rejections, most of the organs were successfully transplanted into patients at other facilities...

St. Vincent conceded in September that its doctors had improperly arranged for a liver transplant to a Saudi national, bypassing 50 people on a regional waiting list whose conditions were more dire, and that hospital staff falsified records to hide the arrangement. The Saudi Embassy paid $339,000 for the operation, as much as 30% more than the hospital would have received from the government or insurance.

Delmonico said the lying made the St. Vincent case worse than UCI's. "It was the intentional falsification of data which was so egregious about St. Vincent," he said.

Separately, the organ network board took steps to increase its oversight in light of the problems at St. Vincent and UCI. It will require transplant centers to notify the network within five days when regulators take action that threatens the programs' ability to perform transplants. UCI had not notified the network of a highly critical inspection last summer by federal regulators...

But free enterprise makes the American medical system the best in the world!

For those that can afford it- and obviously being able to meet the market rate with a little raise helps, too.