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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, July 20, 1999 		Contact: HHS Press Office
(202) 690-6343

STATEMENT BY DONNA E. SHALALA
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services
Regarding Findings of the Institute of Medicine On Organ Transplantation

"We welcome the findings of the Institute of Medicine panel. These findings make clear that changes are urgently needed to produce better and fairer outcomes for our nation's organ transplant patients. The panel's findings strongly validate the concerns which HHS has had about the present system, and they support the approach we have put forward for improving it.

"The panel's leading recommendation is for broader sharing of organs. This has been a primary goal for HHS, and is at the heart of the regulations we have issued. The panel finds that broader sharing will increase transplantation rates for patients with greatest medical need, and in that way more lives can be saved.

"The panel also endorses the oversight role for HHS which was envisioned in the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984; and it recognizes the crucial need for improved data for patients and their doctors -- another key goal of the HHS regulation.

"The panel, like HHS, believes that day-to-day transplant decisions must be made by surgeons and other transplant professionals. Likewise, HHS looks to the transplant community to design the specific policies that are needed to improve our nation's transplant system.

"The bottom line is clear. Changes are needed to better serve patients, and broader organ sharing along with better information are at the heart of the changes that are needed. These have been HHS' specific goals since the publication of our final OPTN rule in April 1998.

"The IoM report has achieved the goal the Congress intended for it. It provides clarity to this issue and dispenses with misconceptions. It provides a good basis for moving ahead now to finalize our rule and proceed with development of appropriate transplant policies by the transplant community. We have already indicated our intention to make alterations in the final regulation that will result in the best possible product, and in recent months we have been meeting with transplant professionals and patient groups toward that end.

"It is our intention now, with the IoM findings in hand, to move vigorously in a cooperative effort to put the final regulation into effect and bring about the improvements that IoM has recognized are so clearly needed. Further delay can only needlessly injure patients."

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