The University of California, Irvine, Medical Center in Orange County, California had two civil lawsuits filed Friday, concerning their liver transplant program. The lawsuits concern four patients who claim to have never received their transplant, and three who died waiting for a new liver to become available. UCI Medical Center did not disclose to patients that it did not have a full-time liver transplant surgeon on staff for more than a year, according to Lawrence Eisenberg, an attorney who brought the current cases. Eisenberg states, “UCI simply did not have the capability of performing the transplants because of their lack of staff and insurmountable problems within the program.”
UCI Medical Center’s liver transplant program was closed on November 10th by Chancellor Michael V. Drake after a report released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The report revealed that:
- Between July 2001 and June 2004, the program had a one-year survival rate of 68%-70%, far below the federal requirement of 77%.
- According to federal data, more than 30 patients died while waiting for transplants within the past two years.
- The hospital was performing far less than the 12 transplants per year required by the government for federal reimbursement.
UCI Medical Center was not only responsible for Orange County’s only liver transplant program, but had also been under scrutiny from two other major scandals from the recent years: fertility doctors stealing patients’ eggs to implant in fertile women (who did on occasion give birth), and the firing of the director of the cadaver program, due to suspicion that he had been illegally selling spines to an Arizona research program.
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