Over 10 lawsuits filed against United Network for Organ Sharing

A growing number of lawsuits claim the nonprofit that administers the nation’s organ transplant network used a racist calculation to require Black people with kidney failure to be sicker before they could receive a transplant.

At least 10 lawsuits have been filed against United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s network of organ transplant programs at hospitals, in federal courts across the country since April 2023. Lawyers involved say they expect the volume of cases to grow as more people learn they were affected.

The lawsuits are all filed on behalf of individuals who say their kidney transplants were unfairly delayed or they were unable to get on the transplant eligibility list because of the calculation used by UNOS and medical providers. They seek unspecified damages for suffering and economic losses caused by the alleged delays in care, and some seek punitive damages against UNOS and the hospitals.

The calculation used to determine transplant eligibility, which the organ network directed hospitals to stop using two years ago, adjusted a key marker of Black patients’ kidney function based in part on a false assumption that Black people have more muscle than other racial groups, the lawsuits claim. As a result, Black patients with kidney failure were forced to wait longer — and become sicker — than non-Black patients to receive a kidney transplant or to be added to the waitlist for one.

The National Kidney Foundation website shows that Black or African-American people are more than three times as likely than white Americans to have kidney failure. About 97,000 people in the U.S. are on the waitlist for a kidney transplant, according to data from the organ network overseen by UNOS.

The lawsuits name UNOS and transplant programs at major hospital systems including Cedars-Sinai, Mass General Brigham and the University of Southern California.

A spokesperson for UNOS said it would respond to the claims in court and declined to comment further on the litigation.

A representative for Keck Medicine of USC said in a statement the hospital is committed to equitable care for all patients. The hospital does not believe the allegations have merit, the statement said.

A spokesperson for Mass General Brigham in Boston, which is facing two lawsuits, said the hospital was “one of the first hospital systems to discontinue the use of a race based co-efficient.” The statement also said that the calculation was supported by a “broad medical consensus” for decades.

A spokesperson for Cedars-Sinai declined to comment.

Of the 10 lawsuits filed, two are class actions. Nine of the cases were filed this year. The latest was filed on Sept. 23 in Illinois by attorney Shawn Collins.

A proposed class action against UNOS and Cedars-Sinai over the calculation appears to be the first lawsuit filed, back in April 2023. In March of this year, a federal judge allowed the bulk of the claims seeking damages to proceed, according to court records.

Dexter Welch has been waiting for more than a dozen years for a transplant and has now been told by transplant surgeons that his health has declined too much for him to undergo the surgery for a new kidney, said his lawyer Matthew Venezia.

“If that’s the case, all that means is the delay is ultimately going to cost him his life,” Venezia said.

In June 2022, the organ network announced it would stop relying on the race-adjusted calculation, which was first used in the 1990s. It gave hospitals until January of this year to identify Black patients who were impacted and request adjustments to their places on the wait list.

Some of the patients suing alleged they weren’t contacted about the changed policy.

“Inevitably, some Black patients died waiting for a kidney because of this,” Collins said.

UNOS had sole oversight of the national organ transplantation network for decades. But legislation passed in the wake of a 2022 U.S. Senate committee investigation into UNOS’ management of the network, which found problems with the transplantation process in the U.S., directed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to solicit other vendors. UNOS has said it welcomes the competition for the oversight position and has objected to many of the investigation’s findings. Reuters