Hoosier State Today

U.S. Senators Todd Young (R-Ind.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and Ben Cardin (D-Md.), members of the Senate Finance Committee, have urged the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to enhance protections against excessive and unnecessary recoveries of pancreata by organ procurement organizations (OPOs). This call follows a significant increase in pancreata recovery rates in recent years.

“It appears that OPOs may be using taxpayer dollars to create demand rather than meet existing research needs, which could represent conflicts of interest or self-dealing,” the senators stated. “We urge CMS to immediately begin work to clarify by rule that only pancreata recovered for research focused on pancreatic islet cell transplantation and conducted under FDA-approved clinical research be counted toward recertification. These steps will help close the pancreata loophole, and by doing so CMS will protect patients, preserve Medicare integrity, and ensure equitable application of the metrics across OPOs.”

The letter addressed to CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure follows a memorandum issued earlier this year by the agency. The memorandum aimed to clarify a previous rule from 2020 that has led to a sharp rise in pancreata procurements.

Last year, the senators initiated an inquiry into the pancreata procurement practices of 10 OPOs. Preliminary findings indicate that the number of pancreata recovered for research surged from 169 in 2018 to 1606 in 2022, marking an 850 percent increase. In 2018, 87.6 percent of these pancreata were used for islet cell transplantation research; however, this figure dropped to 47.9 percent in 2022.

The full letter is available here.