The region’s most famous organ recipient is doing well after getting a new kidney this week, and he’s not alone: A record number of patients received organ donations in New England last year, according to the nonprofit that oversees the system here.
However, the group is concerned that changes in federal regulations coming this year, which officials say are necessary to improve safety, might undermine the system.
Tim Andrews, the Concord man who broke a record by living nine months with a transplanted kidney from a pig as he battled end-stage kidney disease, received a human kidney at Mass General Hospital in Boston this week, according to his family.
“He is doing very well. His doctors are very pleased with his progress. […] He is immensely grateful to his donor’s family,” his sister, Tammy Andrews, wrote in an email.
Andrews’ receipt of a non-human organ came about as part of efforts to deal with a shortage of available organs for people who need them. More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant list, and according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, on average, 13 of them die each day while waiting.
The site OPOdata.org claims more than 250 people in New Hampshire are on organ donation waiting lists.
The current system dates back to 1984 and the passage of the National Organ Transplant Act, which led to the creation of a network of regional organ procurement organizations that coordinate organ donations.
New England Donor Services, the region’s procurement organization, said it coordinated donations from 640 deceased donors in 2025, resulting in a record 1,692 transplants. It said this was the fifth year in a row that the number of transplants had increased. Since 2020, the organization says the number of life-saving organ transplants from New England organ donors has increased by 65%.
“It’s a donation system, and that’s the way it has always been. The law requires that [organ procurement organizations] be charitable nonprofits, and you’re donating your organ as a gift,” said Alexandra Glazier, president and CEO of New England Donor Services.
However, Glazier said the group thinks new performance measurements going into effect this summer could disrupt the pattern.
The changes date back to 2020 in the first Trump administration when new metrics were adopted to evaluate procurement organizations’ performance, including greater emphasis on the overall number of transplants. The need for change became clear last year following reports of cases in Kentucky, and perhaps elsewhere, in which organs were removed before patients were clinically dead.
Glazier said the schedule of performance reviews means the metrics could lead to a number of procurement organizations being forced to close this year.
These organizations have two concerns about the measurements used to decide whether groups like hers can continue to oversee donations. One, Glazier said, is that “they’re not risk-adjusted for most common factors that organ donors have that can impact ability to transplant organs, such as age, cause of death and underlying medical factors.”
“These performance measures are highly concerning because they’re so inaccurate without any risk adjustment, which is highly unusual in health care,” Glazier said.
The other concern is that the new metrics may lead to donation-oversight groups being shut without a replacement, which could harm the interlocking system of donations that occurs between states and often between regions.
“We wouldn’t want to close providers without ensuring that there’s some system, network in place,” Glazier said.
She argued that the changes were “driven by a competitive market-based policy framework [that] misunderstands the deep community engagement of the network. It might open up the field to for-profit or some other who-knows-what, venture-backed entities to come in and take over.”
The New England procurement organization is relatively unusual in that it is has no direct competition, being the only of its kind covering a multi-state area. Many other states have more than one procurement organization.
“We don’t expect that our [organ procurement organization] is going to be closed but are highly concerned about other areas being closed. Any disruption could ripple through the system,” Glazier said.