CMS withdrew Medicare funding from the heart transplant programs at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina and Montefiore Medical Center in New York for failing to perform at least 12 transplants annually, which is Medicare’s standard. And a third heart transplant program at St. Louis University Hospital voluntarily withdrew itself from federal funding, reports the Los Angeles Times. Last year, neither Montefiore nor St. Louis University performed a single transplant, and Wake Forest performed only two. All three hospitals said they plan to keep their heart transplant programs running. Wake Forest and Montefiore have 30 days to challenge CMS’s sanctions.
Barry Straube, Medicare’s chief medical officer, told the Times that other underperforming transplant centers may also lose federal support and that CMS’s recent sanction should serve as a warning. “It might be possible that people were not taking this seriously enough and thinking that we would not take this action,” he said. In an investigative report in June, the Times found that nine lung transplant programs did not meet Medicare’s standards for survival or volume, as did 36 heart programs. CMS has said that it will be issuing new rules for transplant programs by the end of the year.
