JPS Health Network has climbed to No. 3 in the nation for organ donation, ranked among hospitals much larger in size, and remains No. 1 among hospitals that don’t perform transplants.
A record-breaking 60 JPS donors provided 175 transplants in 2017. Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston had 76 donors, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, TN, had 72. JPS and Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, NC, tied for third, each with 60 donors in 2017, according to newly available year-end data from the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), which oversees the nationwide matching of donors with waiting recipients.
Donor registration continues to climb — the Donate Life Texas Registry now holds the names of nearly 10.4 million registered donors — but donors still are outnumbered by would-be recipients. About 8,000 people die every year waiting for a transplant, according to Donate Life America.
Among those whose lives were saved by JPS donors in 2017, many had waited years for transplants, including two women whose combined wait exceeded 5,000 days. Both underwent kidney transplants at a hospital Fort Worth’s Medical District.
LifeGift, the organ procurement organization (OPO) for northwest and southeast Texas, oversees organ donation at JPS.