Health Headlines – September 23, 2024

HRSA Awards Multiple Contracts for Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network Activities

On September 23, 2023, one year ago, President Biden signed the Securing the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network Act into law, which allowed competitive bidding for various federal contracts under the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). One notable aspect of this law is that it allows multiple contracts for certain OPTN tasks rather than bundling all tasks into a single contract. Before this law, a single private non-profit organization, United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), held the contract covering all these tasks for 37 years.

On September 19, 2024, HRSA announced the first multi-vendor contract awards to carry out OPTN operations under the new law. According to HRSA’s press release, the transition from a single vendor to multiple vendors “is a critical step in advancing innovation in the transplant system to better serve patients and their families...” 

HRSA’s announcement of contract awards include functions such as:

• Providing “support on patient safety and the policy compliance systems and processes overseen by the OPTN Board of Directors and the Membership and Professional Standards Committee to improve oversight of the multiple entities in the OPTN.” The contract was awarded to Arbor Research Collaborative for Health.
• Improving “the OPTN organ matching IT system and inform[ing] HRSA’s Next Generation IT procurement and development work.” The contract was awarded to General Dynamic Information Technology.
• Improving “public visibility and engagement in the OPTN policy making process, including improving transparency around OPTN policy making committees’ deliberations and actions.” The contract was awarded to Maximus Federal.
• Improving “communications from the OPTN, within the OPTN and. . . with patients and families.” The contract was awarded to Deloitte.
• Addressing “improvements for OPTN’s budget development and management systems and processes.” The contract was awarded to Guidehouse Digital.

Transplant hospitals and organ procurement organizations will likely have to reconfigure their processes to coordinate, implement, and perhaps even reconcile, information from multiple organizations under this new multi-contract OPTN model.

The HRSA Press Release is available here.

Reporter, Michael L. LaBattaglia, Washington, D.C., +1 202 626 5579, mlabattaglia@kslaw.com.