Politicos have no words, kind or otherwise, for kidney transplant program

People forget that federal officials sought to close University Medical Center's kidney transplant program in 2008 because too many people were dying, and the hospital hadn't addressed quality of care problems.

My favorite shortcoming: UMC's program didn't document that donor blood types were compatible with recipients. UMC also couldn't keep its waiting lists up-to-date. Duh.

The Nevada delegation was asked by county officials to save a program that was failing.

But if you read Paul Harasim's stories in Monday's Las Vegas Review-Journal, you know the transplant program's death rate is now below the national average. That's progress.

The House Ethics Committee is looking into whether Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., had an ethical conflict because of her efforts to keep the center open and also help increase the payments to doctors for kidney care. She failed to disclose in 2008 that her husband, Dr. Larry Lehrner, was a kidney doctor whose group held the kidney care contract with UMC starting in August 2007. The deaths in question occurred before Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada took over the roughly $700,000 annual contract for kidney care.

UMC and Sunrise Hospital both started kidney transplants in 1989. Sunrise's death rate by 2008 was worse than UMC's when it decided to close its kidney transplant center before the feds did. That left UMC as the only game in town.

Why did these hospitals even want to perform kidney transplants? Well, kidney transplants cost about $100,000 and are moneymakers for hospitals, and UMC desperately wanted to bring in paying patients to offset the huge financial drains caused by indigent patients.

When the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services said it would revoke UMC's certification for transplant, it was feared the transplant center would be forced to close and locals who wanted to have transplants here would have to go out of state. Nevada's congressional delegation worked successfully to stay the decertification and prevent the closure.

The statistics from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients showed that between January 2009 through June 30, 2011, UMC's numbers have improved. There were only two deaths out of 98 transplants, or a 97.7 percent survival rate. The national rate is 96.8 percent.

Harasim reported that since July 2011, there have been 91 additional transplants without any deaths.

Obviously, the program at UMC is now a winner, both for the hospital's finances and local patients.

Can I say it one more time? If Berkley had disclosed that her husband was a kidney doctor when she was dealing with kidney issues, she most likely wouldn't be facing a House Ethics Committee investigation.

But she didn't.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid's silly statement that in Southern Nevada "everyone there knows she's married to a nephrologist" is flat out wrong. I'll lay odds that most reporters in 2008 might have known "Dr. Larry" was a doctor, but not what kind of doctor. The Review-Journal stories about the threatened closure didn't mention that he was a kidney doctor, or that his group had the UMC contract.

Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., recently said he didn't know what kind of doctor Lehrner was when he signed a letter of support. Nor did he know Lehrner might stand to profit if the transplant center remained open.

Heller runs nasty ads calling Berkley "corrupt" but refuses to comment, telling reporters to address their questions to his campaign, not him. That leaves the impression that his campaign is smarter than he is and he's just a puppet dangling on his advisers' string.

Why didn't Berkley tout the program's success?

Harasim and I were the ones asking about the program's most recent death rate.

The health writer got the runaround in his search for comments. Lehrner referred Harasim to Berkley's campaign, her campaign didn't answer his questions and Heller didn't return repeated calls, continuing his Mute Boy act.

Anyone else reminded of the Three Stooges?

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Email her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call her at 702-383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/Morrison