Each day, about 77 people receive the organ transplant that gives them a second chance while 19 others die waiting for an organ donation, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)/Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The numbers of people receiving transplants each year and living longer after transplants are growing, thanks to dedicated medical teams like the ones at Shands Jacksonville and Shands at UF.
Shands Jacksonville and Shands at UF are two of only 20 hospitals in the state and 371 nationwide to receive the HHS Medal of Honor for Organ Donation at an awards ceremony held recently in New Orleans. Rear Admiral Kenneth P. Moritsugu, M.D., M.P.H., acting Surgeon General – and a donor father and donor husband himself – presented the awards.
Accepting the award for Shands Jacksonville were Miren Schinco, M.D., an associate professor and chief of the UF Division of Trauma and Critical Care at Jacksonville; Rita James, vice president for ambulatory services at University of Florida Jacksonville Healthcare, Inc.; Carmen D’Agostino, director of hospital services at LifeQuest organ recovery services; and Susie Repper, R.N., manager of the Shands Jacksonville Transplant Center.
Sponsored by the HHS/HRSA Division of Transplantation and given as part of the Second National Learning Congress on Organ Donation and Transplantation, the awards recognize hospitals nationwide that have achieved outstanding rates for organ donation by substantially raising the organ donation rates of eligible donors from their facilities.
To receive the honor, hospitals and their organ procurement organizations – or OPOs – must have had at least eight eligible donors and achieved a 75-percent conversion rate in any single, continuous 12-month period occurring between May 2005 and September 2006. In comparison, the national average donation rate in all hospitals nationwide was 59 percent in 2005, up from 55 percent in 2004. The 371 winning hospitals came from a pool of 787 hospitals that met eligibility criteria.
Schinco attributes Shands Jacksonville’s successful conversion rate to a good partnership with the facility’s OPO as well as a large potential donor pool. “We have a very timely referral, and we’re at about a 95- to 100-percent referral for the trauma service,” she said. “We work well together, and it clicks.”