Heart transplant centers may be lucrative for hospitals, but five in the Philadelphia area is just too many, charge critics who maintain that there aren’t enough patients requiring transplants to allow surgeons to do enough of the procedures to ensure good outcomes, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer. The region has the same number of heart transplant centers as Los Angeles, but with only half the population. Last year, three of the Philadelphia-area programs did fewer than 12 transplants, the minimum Medicare sets for funding. And although surgeons at the smaller transplant centers expect their numbers to grow, heart transplants have been decreasing as less invasive procedures have been developed to treat heart failure. In 2003, there were 93 heart transplants in the Philadelphia area compared with 175 in 1997. Five transplant programs “is not competition. It’s just stupid,” Abraham Shaked, director of the University of Pennsylvania Transplant Center, told the Inquirer. Two programs would be sufficient, he said.
