Today, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) announces that for the first time in the 40-year history of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), the OPTN Board of Directors—the governing board that develops national organ allocation policy—is now separately incorporated and independent from the Board of long-time OPTN contractor, the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). HRSA has awarded an OPTN Board Support contract to American Institutes for Research to support the newly incorporated OPTN Board of Directors.
These critical actions to better serve patients by breaking up the monopoly that ran the nation’s organ allocation system are part of the OPTN modernization plan announced by HRSA in March 2023. Prior to these steps, the national body responsible for developing organ allocation policy for the country—the OPTN—and the corporate entity contracted to implement the policy—UNOS—shared the exact same Board of Directors. The new board support contractor will be accountable to HRSA and will organize a special election for a new OPTN Board of Directors with a focus on eliminating conflicts of interest and ensuring that data, evidence, and the voices of clinical leaders, scientific experts, patients, and donor families are driving action and accountability. Moving forward, no member of the OPTN Board can sit on an OPTN vendor’s board of directors.
“Families anxiously waiting for a life-saving transplant for their loved one shouldn’t have to worry about how the system that determines who gets what organ is managed and governed,” said HRSA Administrator Carole Johnson. “That’s why we in the Biden-Harris Administration launched our major reform initiative to ensure patients, families, and clinicians have access to a best-in-class system that is fair, reliable, and transparent. Today’s announcements are an essential step forward in this work to make the system work better for patients and families.”
Under the Biden-Harris Administration, HRSA launched its Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network Modernization Initiative to address systemic issues that have plagued the national organ allocation system for years, including inequities in access to transplant, lost organs, conflicts of interest, system reliability issues, and lack of transparency.
Last year, the President’s Budget included both legislative and funding reforms to implement the Administration’s vision for reform, which bipartisan leaders in Congress embraced—leading to the enactment of the Securing the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network Act in Fall 2023 and new appropriations commitments to implement the law.
With this new authority and funding, HRSA has worked swiftly to launch new opportunities to engage best-in-class expertise to support modernization. The OPTN Board Support contract awarded today will not only support the work associated with a new board election but also will provide logistical and governance support to the OPTN Board of Directors to improve the accountability and transparency of OPTN policymaking and governance processes. Additional separate, multi-vendor contracts to manage various functions of the OPTN will be awarded in the coming months.