Federal authorities have started a wide-ranging investigation of the nonprofit organizations that collect organs for transplant in the U.S. to determine whether any of the groups have been defrauding the government. The probe involves U.S. Attorneys who are investigating organ procurement organizations in at least five states, says the Washington Post. Their team includes investigators from the Department of Health and Human Services and the office of Michael Missal, the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs. They are seeking to determine, among other things, whether any of thegroups have been overbilling the government for their costs. The investigation has been underway for at least several months. In a sign the probe is intensifying, investigators from the VA inspector general were “dispatched” to the offices and homes of 10 chief executives of organ procurement organizations this month “as part of an inquiry,” according to a notice that Steve Miller of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, sent to his membership.
Deficiencies in the nationwide organ transplant system have been the subject of increasing government scrutiny in recent years. An investigation led by federal prosecutors — which carries the possibility of criminal charges — could be the gravest threat yet to the status quo in the troubled, multibillion-dollar organ transplant industry. The nation’s 56 organ procurement organizations collect organs — mainly kidneys — from deceased donors at hospitals and arrange for them to be transported to surgeons at the 250 U.S. medical centers that perform transplants. Each procurement group holds a government-guaranteed monopoly over a swath of U.S. territory where it operates.
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