By Alex Wayne

The House cleared legislation Friday that would authorize $5 million more each year for the agency that administers and organizes organ transplants nationwide.

Authorized federal spending for the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network would rise from $2 million per year to $7 million. The network, run by the nonprofit United Network for Organ Sharing, maintains databases of organ transplant patients and donors and matches the two groups, and sets policies on how organs are allocated.

The legislation (HR 6469) was cleared by a voice vote; President Bush is expected to sign it.

The federal funding authorization has remained unchanged since the transplant network was created in 1984 (PL 98-507), according to the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo.

Since then, she said Friday, the network’s annual operating costs have increased from $5 million to $27 million in fiscal 2008, and the demand for organ transplants has increased substantially. The network gets the remainder of its budget from fees charged to hospitals for listing transplant patients in its data base.

“With a modest increase in funds, the services provided by the [network] can serve as a lifeline to many,” DeGette said.

The Senate passed the bill Oct. 2. Before it acted, the Senate added an amendment ordering a report from the network’s executive director on the results of a 2006 policy change on heart transplants.

The policy was aimed at reducing deaths among people waiting for heart transplants, according to a PowerPoint presentation on the policy by UNOS. The policy change gave higher priority for transplants to people in more urgent need of a new heart, instead of to people in less urgent need but located closer to the donor.

The Senate amendment asks for the agency to report on the number of heart transplant centers that have closed since the policy was changed, and whether access to heart transplants has been reduced as a result, particularly for people in rural areas.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., requested the report, according to a Coburn aide. The aide said that a heart transplant center in Tulsa, Okla., closed after the new policy was enacted.

The bill cleared by the House Friday was named for the late Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio,who died Aug. 20 of a brain aneurysm.

Tubbs Jones was a committed advocate of organ transplantation, and her own organs and tissues were donated upon her death this summer, DeGette said.