Kelly George of Enfield is a volunteer for New England Donor Services.
This year, I celebrate the 13th anniversary of the medical intervention that saved my life. On, December 3rd in 2009 I received a heart transplant, replacing my own failing organ with one gifted by an individual who had died.
Prior to the transplant, I was near death and each day on the transplant waitlist felt like an eternity, never knowing if the life-saving gift I so desperately needed would come in time. This took a toll not just on me, but on my friends and family, husband and children, who stood by helplessly as the hours and days went by as I grew sicker.
But, fortunately, thanks to an organ allocation system that prioritizes medical urgency, I soon received the call I had been praying for. The donation and transplant teams shifted into high gear and before I knew it, I was on my way to Tufts Hospital in Boston being wheeled into the operating room where my life would be saved and changed.
Unfortunately, a bill now before the NH State Senate puts this miraculous system in danger, with the potential to disrupt the entire donation and transplant process in New England. The bill before the Senate, HB 583, would replace the current equitable system of organ allocation that prioritizes patients who are the sickest and have waited for the longest with a process allowing individuals to demand their gifted organs only go to New Hampshire residents rather than those in the region most in medical need.
Not only would this new scheme be unfair to those patients who are sickest and who waited for longest, but it could also be particularly dangerous for New Hampshire residents on the waitlist.
You see, New Hampshire has just a single transplant center at Dartmouth Hitchcock which only performs kidney and pancreas transplants. Granite Staters like me who need any other type of transplant such as heart, liver, lung or small intestine must travel out of state.
If, as supporters of HB 583 envision, other states begin to adopt the “my state first” organ donor legislation, what happens to all the New Hampshire patients awaiting liver, heart and lung transplants in Boston or elsewhere? New Hampshire patients would be severely disadvantaged and could wind up never being transplanted as the organs are directed only to Massachusetts patients. The path of a state hoarding organs leads nowhere.
Also, federal law makes it clear that such proposed state legislation violates established rules. When the system of organ allocation was created, ethicists were certain to make sure that although an organ can be donated to a specifically named friend or family member waitlisted for an organ transplant (if biological match), the directing of organs to groups of people by race, religion, geography or such traits is strictly prohibited.
The passage of a New Hampshire bill that elevates the allocation of organs to patients based on state residence above sicker patients (medical urgency) or patients that have been waiting longer will put in jeopardy any New Hampshire hospital or transplant center that attempts to allocate organs out of compliance with the national waitlist criteria. So not only would the proposed legislation put patients at risk, it would put our hospitals and sole transplant center in regulatory danger as well.
The existing U.S. policy for allocation seeks to maximize the life-saving benefit of every donated organ. Allocation of gifted organs is made to the patient who is sickest within a geographic radius that accounts for a reasonable transportation time of the recovered organ to ensure viability. This patient-focused national policy ensures that the most lives are saved, recognizing that many patients like me must travel between states to receive transplants.
This ethical and responsible policy of “sickest first” which has been demonstrated to save more lives, including my own, should be honored and New Hampshire should soundly reject alternatives that needlessly put transplant patients at added risk.