Lee Memorial cancels all kidney transplants for next few months
Lee Memorial Health System has suspended its kidney transplant center at Gulf Coast Medical Center until further notice, as it continues to overhaul the 26-year-old surgical program.
The decision, announced Friday, affects 259 patients on the waiting list to receive kidneys, according to the health system.
Transplants involving live kidney donors have been on hold for nearly a year.
This announcement affects transplants using kidneys from recently deceased donors — the vast majority of transplant cases. The last such surgery took place March 23.
Dr. Lynsey Biondi, a kidney transplant specialist and the newly announced director of Gulf Coast's transplant program, predicted that the program will begin to resume in one to three months. Transplants involving live donors may not resume until at least the fall, she said.
Biondi said the health system has contacted all patients on the transplant list and is working to transfer some of them to other Florida transplant programs. The nearest are in Tampa and Miami. Others are expected to wait out this temporary shutdown, she said.
"So we're hoping that it's not going to affect too many people," Biondi said. "I understand that it is an emotional thing, and we're sorry for that, but I honestly believe this is for the best interests of the patients, to keep them safe until we rebuild this team."
Following death, Lee Memorial overhauls kidney transplant program
The health system has spent the last year restructuring the transplant program in response to the death of 40-year-old donor John Donaldson. Donaldson, a Cape Coral father of three, died in surgery after giving a kidney to his father. He was the first donor to die in the program's history.
The group overseeing U.S. transplant programs, the United Network for Organ Sharing, placed Gulf Coast’s program on probation in December and insisted that Gulf Coast fundamentally change how it operated the program.
Until now, private practice doctors oversaw transplants in cooperation with the health system. Lee Memorial will now assume full control of the program, something transplant regulators required for the program to reopen. Surgeons and medical staff involved with future transplants will all be health system employees.
Administrators are now recruiting another transplant surgeon and kidney transplant specialists to join the new team.
The health system is also spending $1.2 million to move the transplant center's paper-based medical records into the organization's electronic medical records system.
Dr. Scott Nygaard, the health system's chief medical officer for physician services, said the cost of rebuilding the program will likely total $4 million.
Gulf Coast's transplant program has performed more than 900 transplants since opening in 1990. About 130 of those came from living donors.
Dr. Gordon Burtch, the transplant center's former surgical director and one of the program's founding physicians, severed his affiliation with it two weeks ago. Burtch, who operates a private practice near Gulf Coast, said he is "very proud" of the program's 26-year history.
But Burtch said he did not feel adequately consulted during administrative deliberations about the program and about pending changes to it. He explained his decision to step down this way:
"I just don't have any faith in the direction that the program is going, and I have real questions about the administrative leadership of the transplant program," Burtch said. "As far as I know, there's nobody in the Lee Memorial administrative leadership position that has any transplant experience. And yet, for the last year and a half, they've been making all the transplant decisions."
Gulf Coast kidney transplant program placed on probation
It's unclear what effect the changes will have on the program's relationship with the region's private physician practices, who had referral relationships with the program's now-departed transplant and kidney-care specialists.
Biondi acknowledged the changes might cause some "disruption" in how the private practices do business with the transplant center. But she praised their work in helping to build it.
"The community owes them thanks for providing this care for over 20 years," she said.
Friday's announcement also served as a public introduction of Biondi, the program's new director.
She earned her medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. She completed her surgical residency at the Hospital of Saint Raphael in New Haven, Connecticut, and completed an abdominal transplant surgery fellowship at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
From 2010 until taking the job at Gulf Coast, she was a transplant surgeon at Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She served as the Director of Pancreas Transplants and was the primary laparoscopic surgeon for the program, according to the health system.
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