9 hours Ago By Sarah Grunau
Following allegations that a Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center surgeon manipulated government transplant records, a national organization that manages the distribution of organs flagged the Houston hospital for its failure to comply with standards — a rare designation. The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network’s board of directors Feb. 20 declared the hospital as a “member not in good standing,” the most severe action that the network can take against one of its member hospitals.
The designation is intended to provide public notice that the hospital committed a serious violation of its policies or bylaws, or has demonstrated a “serious lapse in patient safety or quality of care.” The bylaws also provide standards for members to eventually have the designation reconsidered and removed if they demonstrate substantive improvement, according to the network. Allegations arose last year that Dr.
J. Steve Bynon, a liver transplant surgeon at the medical center, manipulated a government database to prevent patients from receiving new livers. The development came just days after the hospital system announced it was effectively stopping the liver and kidney transplant programs because of a pattern of irregularities with donor acceptance criteria within the United Network for Organ Sharing database.
The allegations prompted families of some hospital patients waiting for transplants to file a class-action lawsuit against the hospital. Families at the forefront of the lawsuit against Bynon were granted a temporary injunction in May to prevent the accused doctor from deleting any relevant evidence. RELATED: Her husband died waiting on a Houston hospital's liver transplant list.
Now she intends to take legal action According to a statement posted to the liver transplant webpage, the hospital system last year said it was made aware that "a single physician made inappropriate changes to the donor acceptance criteria within the United Network for Organ Sharing transplant information database for patients awaiting a liver transplant at Memorial Hermann." A Memorial Hermann Health System spokesperson on Wednesday said the hospital was made aware of the “not in good standing” designation and is in the process of notifying each transplant patient in its abdominal and thoracic programs about the designation. “Memorial Hermann is aware of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network’s decision and is focused on safely and appropriately resuming our abdominal transplant program in a timely manner in order to continue serving the hundreds of patients who rely on our team for high-quality care,” the spokesperson said.
The hospital’s abdominal transplant program remains voluntarily inactive as the hospital works to reopen it. “While this designation unfortunately applies to all of the hospital’s transplant programs, it does not affect our ability to continue providing care to patients, including transplantation services,” the Memorial Hermann spokesperson said. “Given that the OPTN only identified concerns with the liver program, we intend to continue operating the thoracic transplant programs as normal.
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