Friday, August 24, 2012

Incentives and organ donation in Germany

Bettina Klaus writes:  There is an article about a recent organ donation scandal at the university hospital Goettingen

One of the transplant surgeons there seems to have manipulated patient files (25 cases are currently under investigation) in order to push his patients up on the waiting list. Interestingly his salary depended on the numbers of transplants he did and the article states that under his lead the number of liver transplants at the university hospital Goettingen had significantly increased in 2009 and 2010. 

Here's an English account of that, and organ sales as well: Desperation, Greed and the Global Organ Trade 
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Something similar  to the Goettingen events led to a change in the deceased-donor liver allocation system in the U.S.
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See also http://www.spiegel.de/gesundheit/diagnose/organspende-skandal-goettingen-montgomery-fordert-schaerfere-kontrollen-a-847985.html, for a related story (also in German), which focuses on recent changes in the German transplant and organ donation systems. (HT Rosemarie Nagel)
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And Markus Mobius points to this article (also in German, but the headline is clear): Transplantationsskandal

He writes "The article says that an increasing share of transplants in Germany are now bypassing the waiting list and go straight to in-house patients.
"10 years ago, 9.1% of livers, 8.4% of hearts, 10.6% of lungs and 6.3% of pancreas bypassed the waiting list. Now the shares are 37.1%, 25.8%, 30.3% and 43.7%, respectively. "

2 comments:

Unknown said...

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charity donation said...

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