UC Regents claim ROPA met standards

Monday, August 31, 1998

UC Regents claim ROPA met standards

ORGANS: Officials believe organization should keep certification
after review

By Kathryn Combs

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Less than a month after a UCLA-based organ donor center was
stripped of its certification, the UC Board of Regents has filed a
complaint in federal court against this action.

According to the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA),
UCLA’s Regional Organ Procurement Agency (ROPA) failed to meet
minimum federal standards at its last inspection and will be taken
over by the Southern California Organ Procurement Center (SCOPC) by
Nov. 1.

However, ROPA officials are claiming that they did meet these
standards after they were required to reorganize, and their service
area was changed.

"The complaint is that they asked us to reorganize, we did what
they asked us to and since we reorganized, we have met the
(federal) standards. We should be redesignated," said Gary
Cottongim, executive director of ROPA.

"It couldn’t be clearer – the HCFA got its facts wrong when they
surveyed ROPA’s activities," he added.

In 1996, the HCFA, a division of the U.S. Department of Health,
implemented new standards for all organ procurement agencies.

According to these new standards, each center is evaluated,
based on the size of the patient population and five additional
criteria: number of donors per million patients, kidneys recovered
per million, kidneys transplanted per million, extra-renal organs –
such as hearts and lungs – recovered per million and extra-renal
organs transplanted by million.

According to SCOPC, the agency fell short in three of these
areas: number of kidneys transplanted, number of kidneys recovered
and number of extra-renal organs recovered.

"Every organ procurement organization is evaluated in the same
way," said Sandra Sternberg, spokesperson for SCOPC, "and it has
been two years since the last evaluation."

However, it is the time period over which evaluations are
carried out that officials are contending is improper.

According to the HCFA, evaluations are conducted every two
years. ROPA’s last evaluation was for the period spanning 1996 and
1997.

Since the new standards were implemented in May 1996 and UCLA’s
donor center was in the process of reorganizing during the summer
months of 1996, its officials are claiming that their poor
performance during this time was due to the new standards.

"What (the HCFA) has to do, according to their interpretation of
the redesignation, is they have to look at all of 1996 and 1997,"
Cottongim said.

"We say, don’t look at the first part of 1996. Look at (our
quality) since we reorganized. Since we completed the
reorganization in October of 1996, we have met all the standards
continuously," he added.

Simpson, however, said that they could not leave out any period
of time to conduct a sufficient evaluation.

"The actual evaluation period is a regulatory request," he
said.

Expecting to prevail, ROPA officials say that they will continue
to provide full services to its 90 donor hospitals until this
matter is resolved.

According to the HCFA, SCOPC is still slated to take over and
their evaluation still stands.

"We based our evaluation on a failure to meet a sufficient
number of performance standards. I know (ROPA) is not happy, but
there is not too much we can do right now," Simpson said.

"We don’t have any other choice."