By KATHLEEN HOSTERT
In hospitals, dialysis centers and home sickbeds throughout Orange County, more than a thousand people await the gift of life-saving hearts, lives, kidneys and other vital organs. How likely are they to have their needs met in light of growing waiting lists, the health insurance crisis and stories of rare but troubling problems at transplant programs?
The answer to that question depends on the actions of hospitals, regulators, insurers, employers and individuals, each of whom plays a vital role.
OC hospitals have made remarkable strides by becoming actively involved in the Organ Donation Transplant Breakthrough Collaborative, with four local hospitals achieving 70% and higher donation rates. Those four hospitals are: UCI Medical Center, Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center, Western Medical Center Santa Ana and Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian.
UCI Medical Center officials have successfully addressed challenges with their transplant program and returned to good standing and outstanding performance in their kidney transplant program. Insurers, both public and private, continue to cover transplantation, though the uninsured still suffer a lack of access to this life saving procedure in OC, as elsewhere in the nation.
Meanwhile, OC employers, including the city of Fullerton and Washington Mutual branches, have implemented organized donation programs to inspire their staff and customers to register as organ and tissue donors. Individuals in OC make up more than 8% of the 2 million Californians who have registered on the still new Donate Life California registry.
Positive efforts such as these have contributed to organ donations that save some 30,000 lives nationwide each year, including nearly a thousand OC residents. But these donations fall far short of the number needed. Currently, nearly 100,000 people are on the national organ transplant waiting list. That total includes just less than 10,000 in OC and the six other Southern California counties served by OneLegacy, the region’s nonprofit organ and tissue recovery agency. Last year, OneLegacy coordinated a record 1,338 organ transplants,a record, but not nearly the number needed.
According to a recent study by Susan Morgan of Purdue University, one contributor to the shortfall in organ donation is television. The way organ donation and transplantation is portrayed in movies and on TV,with doctors, nurses and others who are involved in the recovery of organs almost always shown in a bad light,has a negative influence on the public’s willingness to donate.
This is deeply troubling to me for both professional and personal reasons. As OneLegacy’s workplace and community partnerships coordinator in OC, as well as a living organ donor,having given one of my kidneys to my husband nine years ago,some might say that my involvement in this field has made me overly sensitive to negative portrayals of donation on the big or small screen.
In response to the Purdue research, OneLegacy is working closely with the movie and TV industry, through Donate Life Hollywood, to promote greater understanding and prevent further inaccurate portrayal of the donation process.
I wish it were possible to post a picture of all OC patients in need of an organ on the Internet and call everyone’s attention to their plight. Lacking the ability to do that, OneLegacy is working closely with the movie and TV industry to promote greater understanding and prevent further inaccurate portrayal of the donation process.
Hostert is a Fullerton resident and OneLegacy’s Community Partnerships Coordinator in OC.
