MercyOne halts its kidney and pancreas transplant program

Tony Leys
The Des Moines Register

Des Moines' MercyOne Medical Center is halting its kidney and pancreas transplant program for at least a year, hospital officials said Thursday.

MercyOne had been performing about 30 transplants per year, and MercyOne said it is taking a pause to consider whether Des Moines needs two kidney transplant programs. 

Iowa Methodist Medical Center also has a kidney transplant program, which handles more than twice as many operations per year. MercyOne said it is working with Methodist to take on patients who were expecting to have their kidney transplants done at MercyOne.

“Great care is being taken to ensure all transplant patients receive the care and services they need while our program is temporarily inactivated.” Linda Goodwin, MercyOne's chief operating officer said in a statement.

MercyOne said the voluntary deactivation begins July 1 and will last up to a year.

The hospital now has 78 patients waiting for kidney or pancreas transplants.

One of those patients is Jim Moore, 36, of Rockford, who has been on MercyOne's waiting list since 2018. His fiancee, Sammi Barlow, said Thursday that Moore needs a kidney and pancreas transplant because his diabetes damaged those organs.

Barlow said Mercy temporarily stopped the pancreas-transplant program in 2017, when Moore went there for testing before being put on the transplant waiting list. Mercy officials said then that the program would be restarted quickly. "When they took it off of hold, they told us we would never have to worry about this again," she said. 

Kidney patient Jim Moore, left, and his fiancee, Sammi Barlow. Moore, who lives in Rockford, had hoped to get a kidney and pancreas transplant at MercyOne Medical Center, which is suspending its transplant program.

Barlow said if the couple had known MercyOne's program might be suspended again, they would have signed up at multiple hospitals. She said Moore can't go to Iowa Methodist Medical Center, because Methodist doctors don't transplant pancreases. The couple plans instead to sign up at the University of Iowa and at the University of Minnesota's transplant programs, she said. 

Jennifer Ellis, a spokeswoman for Iowa Methodist Medical Center's parent company, confirmed the hospital does not perform pancreas transplants. To add a pancreas-transplant program, the hospital would have to apply for a state permit, called a "certificate of need," she said. 

"It's not something you can just start next week or next month," Ellis said. Such "certificate of need" permits are required for expensive health care programs, and they can take months of legal work and hearings to obtain. Ellis said the nearest pancreas-transplant programs are in Omaha, Iowa City and Rochester, Minn. 

UnityPoint Health-Des Moines, which includes Iowa Methodist Medical Center, said in a press release that it averages about 65 to 70 kidney transplants per year. "We are prepared to provide transplant services to any of the patients that choose to transition their care to us and are already working with several patients," Tom Mulrooney, UnityPoint's vice president of surgical and cardiovascular services, said in the release. 

Patient Scott Pace of Knoxville said he was referred to the MercyOne program in April for a possible kidney transplant because his kidneys have been damaged by an auto-immune disease. He underwent extensive testing, including bloodwork and sonograms, and expected to hear this week whether he would be placed on Mercy's transplant list. Instead, he learned late last week that Mercy would suspend its program.

Pace, 42, said he doubts the staff realized the program would be suspended, but he said administrators probably knew it was likely. They shouldn't have continued accepting new patients, he said.

Pace now fears he will have to repeat the screening process at Iowa Methodist, which could delay his treatment. He also wonders if his health insurance would pay for duplicate testing. "I'm sure it costs thousands and thousands of dollars," he said. 

Suzanne Conrad, chief executive officer of the Iowa Donor Network, confirmed that MercyOne patients who were on the regional waiting list for organs should not lose their spots.

Conrad said Iowa Methodist Medical Center might consider hiring transplant team members from Mercy, so it can take on significantly more patients. "It may be hard for Methodist to get up to speed quickly," she said. 

MercyOne kidney and pancreas program teams have performed 607 transplants in more than 30 years. Mercy also used to perform heart transplants but ended that program in 1998 after performing 87 heart transplants in 13 years.

MercyOne spokesman Gregg Lagan said the program will perform transplants if donor organs become available before July 1. During the program suspension, the hospital's staff will continue to care for patients who received kidney or pancreas transplants there, and it will continue to support efforts to recover organs from patients who die at MercyOne, officials said.