NEDS Successfully Merges OPOs

On January 1, 2021, NEDS was the first in decades to successfully merge two federally-designated organ procurement organizations (OPOs). The OPOs (LifeChoice Donor Services and New England Organ Bank) had affiliated under New England Donor Services in 2017. The merged OPO retains the name New England Organ Bank and is responsible for the recovery of organs and tissues for transplant in a combined donation service area encompassing the states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and the eastern counties of Vermont. The organization recovers organs and tissues in the nearly 200 hospitals that serve the region’s approximately 14 million residents.

Transplanted organs from donors in the LifeChoice service area increased by more than 108 percent since the start of the affiliation and transplanted organs from donors across the entire region increased by 50 percent since 2015. Financial efficiencies resulting from the affiliation are estimated to have saved the donation and transplant system in excess of $3 million.

The affiliation was created to provide more lifesaving organs to patients in need and those goals were met. The merger allows NEDS to continue its efforts to best serve donor families, transplant centers and transplant recipients.

2021 marks NEOB’s fifty-third year as a community based, nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives through the recovery of organs for transplant. Among the founders of NEOB in 1968 was Nobel laureate Joseph Murray, M.D., who performed the first successful human transplant at Boston’s Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in 1954.