Freestanding organ donation centers are spreading. Are they better?

noIt's not often that something makes a big splash in the world of transplant medicine, but in the early 2000s, an ingenious idea emerged in Missouri that had everyone in the field talking.

For the first time, organ donors who are diagnosed as brain dead are being removed from hospitals and transferred to separate, independent centers for organ harvesting. Freeing up these patients from precious, limited ICU beds allows hospitals to devote their time and resources to living patients. At the independent centers, staff can focus on getting the organs in the best possible condition before they are made available to those on transplant waiting lists.

“When we started, we had no idea how it would take off,” says Gary Marklin, chief medical and research officer at MidAmerica Transplant in St. Louis, an organ procurement organization and one of 56 nonprofits nationwide that manage the organ donation process.