HOUSTON – A medical ethicist who studies and teaches the convergence of medicine and ethics remains somewhat puzzled about the alleged data tampering connected to Memorial Hermann’s Liver Transplant program.
We posed the question of why data would be manipulated so that some Memorial Hermann patients would not receive a transplant when it seems counterintuitive.
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Valerie Gutmann Koch, an assistant professor at the University of Houston’s Law Center answered this way:
“That’s a wonderful question. And I think that’s why this case has captured the public imagination the way it has so far, because one can imagine, adapting or changing or manipulating the, lists, the data in order to make sure that your patients are more likely to get organs. But what happened in this case appears to be that, they the data was manipulated. The information in the system was manipulated in order to keep patients from getting much needed organs. And so the reason why seems really, difficult to to identify. You know, the only thing that I can possibly think of at this stage is perhaps there was an effort to cherry pick patients in order to improve survival or outcome rates that to ensure that the organs that are actually being allocated to the patients in that system and at that institution were getting organs that were most likely to result in higher survival rates.”
The complaint, now being investigated by the federal government’s Health and Human Services, has produced no clear-cut wrongdoing early in the investigation. Although Memorial Hermann has already noted “irregularities”. The primary employer of the Dr. Steve Bynon Jr., UT Health Sciences (Bynon is under contract with Memorial Hermann to oversee the Liver and Kidney transplant programs), offered support of the veteran doctor, Friday.
“Dr. Steve Bynon is an exceptionally talented and caring physician, and a pioneer in abdominal organ transplantation. According to the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients, Bynon’s survival rates and surgical outcomes are among the best in the nation, even while treating patients with higher-than-average acuity and disease complexity. UTHealth Houston is proud of the many contributions Dr. Bynon and his team have made to our university, our academic and clinical transplant programs, and to the field of transplant medicine. Our faculty and staff members, including Dr. Bynon, are assisting with the inquiry into Memorial Hermann’s liver transplant program and are committed to addressing and resolving any findings identified by this process,” Deborah Mann Lake, Director of Media Relations for UTHealth Houston, wrote via email.