Sponsors (2)
The bill aims to speed organ matching and fund Network technology and operations through temporary per-candidate fees and increased transparency, but it shifts costs onto providers (hitting small/rural centers hardest), raises privacy concerns, and creates short-term funding and appropriations-transparency risks.
Patients awaiting transplants and transplant providers (hospitals, OPOs, transplant centers) will get faster donor identification and placements through automated EHR referrals, remote EHR access, and a timely transplant-statistics dashboard that improves match speed and coordination.
Hospitals, transplant centers, and the Network will have a dedicated near-term funding stream from temporary per-candidate registration fees to support Network operations and technology improvements (e.g., IT for data sharing and dashboards).
Network members and the public gain greater transparency and congressional oversight — quarterly disclosures about fee usage and a GAO review within two years increase accountability for how registration fees are spent.
Hospitals, especially smaller and rural hospitals and some OPOs, will face higher per-candidate registration fees that increase operating costs and could strain or disadvantage lower-volume providers.
Crediting fees as discretionary offsetting collections may reduce appropriations transparency and effectively shift costs from congressional appropriations onto providers and fee-payers.
Remote EHR access and broader automated data sharing, even if HIPAA-consistent, raise patient privacy and security concerns for donor hospitals' records and transplant candidates' health information.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Adds EHR integration and dashboard duties to OPTN and temporarily authorizes per-candidate registration fees to fund OPTN operations (3-year sunset).
Official title: Authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to collect registration fees from members of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 12, 2025 by Charles Ernest Grassley · Last progress February 12, 2025
Amends the federal Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) law to (1) make minor formatting and wording changes, (2) add two new OPTN duties—encouraging EHR integration/automated referrals and creating a public transplant dashboard—and (3) temporarily authorize the Secretary of HHS to collect registration fees from Network members for each transplant candidate placed on the national list to support OPTN operations. The fee authority lasts three years, requires public quarterly reporting of amounts collected and uses, allows GAO review and a report to Congress within two years, and limits distribution of collected funds to amounts provided in advance in appropriations acts.