Glitch found in U.S. transplant plan

A paperwork glitch denied 25 Northern California patients kidney transplants with near-perfect matches last year, The Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

The patients were transferees to the Kaiser Permanente HMO, whose kidney transplant program in San Francisco was in startup mode -- and all were part of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center's program, which had been under contract to care for them until September 2004.

The newspaper said Kaiser would not authorize UC San Francisco to continue accepting kidneys and transplanting them into Kaiser patients between January 2005 and December 2005, data from the California Transplant Donor Network said.

Before Kaiser opened its program in 2004, it advised more than 1,500 members receiving care at UC San Francisco and UC Davis they had to move to Kaiser's new center if they wanted their transplants covered. Except in rare circumstances, members get their care only from Kaiser hospitals and affiliated Permanente medical group doctors.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International