Authorities Investigate Organ Donation Organizations for Fraud

As reported in The Washington Post and the Guardian, authorities have launched an investigation into whether several nonprofit organ procurement organizations (OPOs) may have defrauded the federal government.

The investigation is focused on whether the OPOs overbilled Medicare and the Department of Veterans Affairs, which reimburse OPOs for procuring organs. Another focus of the investigation is whether OPOs arranged kickbacks between organizations.

The investigation is being led by the Department of Health and Human Services and inspector general Michael Missal with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Association of Organ Procurement Organizations has acknowledged that federal investigators visited several OPOs in February as part of an inquiry.

The organ transplant system, overseen by the United Network for Organ Sharing, has long experienced problems. Several of the 56 organizations within the system that collect organs for donation and transportation to surgeons have collected too few, yet none have been decertified by federal overseers.

A Senate Finance Committee investigation in 2022 revealed that transporters had lost donated organs and that poor screening of donated organs led to 70 deaths between 2008 and 2015. Meanwhile, there are more than 100,000 Americans on the national transplant waiting list.