Last year, we got an alarming story from the New York Times about the problems with organ donations. That article, "A Push for More Organ Transplants is Putting Donors at Risk" prompted this writer to remove her name from Wisconsin's organ donor registry. The New York Times reported that organ procurement groups and healthcare providers are pushing to end care for and harvest organs from individuals who were still alive.

This includes 38-year-old Danella Gallegos, who was in the pre-surgery room when a doctor asked Gallegos to blink. Gallegos did, and she made a full recovery. However, the organ procurement organization wanted the harvesting to proceed and recommended dosing Gallegos with morphine to reduce movements. Misty Hawkins was 42 years old when she choked while eating and fell into a coma. Like Gallegos, an organ procurement organization pushed for donation. When surgeons opened up Hawkins, they found her heart was still beating.

At the time, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that HHS made "horrifying" discoveries that the organ procurement process was started while patients were still showing signs of life. The report showed that of 351 cases where organ donation was authorized but not completed, 103 cases showed "concerning features" like neurological signs incompatible with organ donation, at least 28 patients may not have been deceased when procurement was initiated, and that there were poor neurological assessments, a lack of coordination with medical teams, and questionable consent practices.

Now Sec. Kennedy has decertified a Kentucky organ procurement organization, Network for Hope, after the group ignored signs of life in several patients scheduled for organ donations.

"I am announcing that HHS has become the decertification of Network for Hope, the organ procurement organization serving Kentucky and parts of Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia. We reached this decision after extensive reviews by CMS and HRSA found persistent patient safety failures despite repeated oversight, repeated warnings, corrective action plans, and multiple opportunities to improve," Kennedy said.

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"Federal reviewers found serious deficiencies in nearly 30 percent of the cases that they examined," he continued. "We found patients placed on the organ donation pathway who should have never been there. We found cases with a donation process continued despite signs the patients were not appropriate organ donors. We found repeated failures in clinical judgment, oversight, and patient safety."

"We found that these problems continued even after the organization promised to correct them. These failures had real consequences. One of those cases involved DJ Hoover. DJ showed signs of awareness while on the operating table about to have his organs removed. Physicians refused to proceed with the organ recovery because they believed that he was still alive. Because they acted, DJ is alive and is here with us today," Kennedy said.