HCFA Awards Fort Worth Area to LifeGift

The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) redesignated LifeGift Organ Donation Center to serve Tarrant County, turning down a request from the Dallas-based organ donation center for the territory.

The decision allows LifeGift to continue to recover organs for transplant and increase organ donation awareness in the Fort Worth community. LifeGift has served the Fort Worth area since 1991. Southwest Transplant Alliance (STA), the organ donation center based in Dallas, also applied for the right to provide organ donation services to the territory.

"LifeGift's past performance and its proven ability to perform in the future convinced HCFA that it is the best organization to serve this nine-county area," says Sam Holtzman, president and chief executive officer for LifeGift. "We will continue to foster our relationships with our patients, our hospitals and our communities."

Organ donation centers must file recertification requests every two years. HCFA's decision reaffirms its earlier determinations in 1996 and 1998 that LifeGift is the most qualified organ donation center to serve Tarrant County and eight other North Texas counties. In its North Texas region, LifeGift increased organ donation 24.5 percent, from 53 donors in calendar year 1998 to 66 donors in calendar year 1999, a recovery rate of 38.8 donors per million population. That rate was 88 percent higher than the national average of 20.6 donors per million in 1999.

In addition to providing organs for transplantation at hospitals in Tarrant County, LifeGift's North Texas recovery programs share organs for transplantation throughout the state. Transplant programs in Houston receive approximately 25 to 30 percent of their transplantable organs from the Fort Worth area. LifeGift also supplies the Dallas area with organs. From 1991 through 1999, LifeGift's North Region sent Dallas programs a total of 135 organs for transplantation, while the organ donation center in Dallas sent one organ to Fort Worth-based transplant programs.

LifeGift serves 109 counties, 189 hospitals and a population of 7.3 million in Texas. In addition to Fort Worth, LifeGift has offices in Houston, Lubbock and Amarillo.

---

©2006 Texas Medical Center

---

E-Mail: tmcinfo@texmedctr.tmc.edu
URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/08_15_00/page_11.html