FRANKFORT, Ky. — Lawmakers are taking extra steps to ensure organ donor safety.
Under House Bill 510, organ donation must be stopped if any signs of life are detected, which is a standard medical procedure.
Lawmakers, however, want to implement safeguards after a Kentucky man was discovered alive on an operating table as organ preservationists entered to begin the procedure.
Bill sponsor Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Middletown, said the bill puts patients first.
“If anybody who’s involved in the team that is extracting the organ to be donated thinks that there might be signs of life, they just hit the pause button, and then we re-evaluate the person to make sure that everything is OK,” said Nemes.
The Kentucky case prompting this bill happened in 2021 at Baptist Health in Richmond. The organ donor was discovered to be alive on the operating table. The procedure was canceled and prompted an investigation by the Attorney General’s Office.
Under the bill, doctors, nurses, organ procurement staff or the patient’s family could call for the pause.
During the pause, doctors would reassess the patient’s neurological and physical condition and the organ recovery process would only resume if the death is reconfirmed.
Nemes said the bill isn’t meant to scare people away from donation.
“The process is very safe. What we’re doing here is we’re making sure that we put protocols in place to ensure safety, so everybody feels very comfortable about being an organ donor, which is what we want to encourage,” he said.
HB 510 passed unanimously out of committee Thursday and now heads to the full Senate.
