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The South Florida Donor Network, backed by the long-running Nevada Donor Network, is the new organ procurement organization for South Florida and the commonwealth of the Bahamas.<\/p>\n
Marsha Halper<\/p>\n
MIAMI HERALD file<\/p>\n
Sending hospitals the wrong organ. Severe understaffing. Failing to properly identify at least one organ that tested positive for an infectious disease known to cause complications in transplant patients.<\/p>\n
Those are some of the reasons why the Miami-based nonprofit tasked with recovering organs for transplantation across South Florida and the Bahamas was ordered shut down last year by the federal government, records show.<\/p>\n
A 32-page report recently obtained by the Miami Herald through a public records request details the troubling and repeated issues that were recorded over the past seven years at the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency, a division of the University of Miami Health System.<\/p>\n
The problems pushed federal regulators last year to decertify the Life Alliance organ procurement organization (OPO), which was founded in 1978, marking the first time in history an organ procurement organization was decertified \u201cmid-cycle,\u201d since its certification was in place until 2027 at that time. A Las Vegas-based group was later tapped to take over<\/a> Life Alliance\u2019s service area across six South Florida counties \u2014 Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Monroe, Collier and St. Lucie \u2014 and the commonwealth of the Bahamas.<\/p>\n Details were scant at the time, with federal regulators saying that an investigation into Life Alliance \u201cuncovered years of unsafe practices<\/a>, poor training, chronic underperformance, understaffing, and paperwork errors.\u201d Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the group\u2019s consistent staffing shortages across the years \u201cmay have caused as many as eight missed organ recoveries each week, roughly one life lost each day.\u201d<\/p>\n The August 2025 report obtained by the Herald from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services gives a bit more insight into the findings. Here are the highlights:<\/p>\n Sending the wrong organs to hospitals<\/p>\n The report lists three incidents at unidentified hospitals where staff did not properly label recovered organs, a mistake that forced doctors to cancel planned transplant surgeries, delaying patient care. The dates appear to correspond to when reports were written or meetings were held to document and discuss the errors.<\/p>\n March 6, 2023: A patient needed a left kidney. Doctors received a mislabeled right kidney. \u201c[Provider] was concerned the kidney might not have been from the correct donor, since when they contacted [the organ procurement organization], the OPO reported they were very busy managing multiple donors … Because of this, [Provider #A] didn\u2019t transplant the kidney,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n A review of the mishap found that four Life Alliance members tasked with organ verification did not do their job. The staff members verified the kidney only using the label, instead of visually verifying the organ, as required by policy. One staff member said she was never trained to visually verify the organ. Another staff member said \u201che looked at the organ and thought he saw a right kidney … but a left label was affixed, and the left kidney was what was expected.\u201d The report states that he \u201cdid not follow training or procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n Nov. 21, 2023: A visiting surgical team from Minnesota procured and packaged the wrong lung and refused to allow Life Alliance members to photograph the organ, a process that is part of organ verification. Life Alliance did not know the wrong organ was taken until the surgeons called to say they took the left lung, instead of the right lung.<\/p>\n The \u201cstaff took their eyes off what was happening around them,\u201d an unnamed member of the Life Alliance\u2019s leadership team said in the report. \u201cThey allowed themselves to be intimidated by the visiting surgeons, including allowing them to act on their own and to usurp the OPO\u2019s responsibilities for packing, labeling, and laterality verification.\u201d Life Alliance in December 2023 issued \u201cdisciplinary actions to team members who were involved in the case,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n May 21, 2024: A surgeon called off a heart transplant surgery while in the operating room due to Life Alliance\u2019s inability to verify that the donated heart was the correct organ for the patient. The report explains that the wrong organ verification paperwork was provided to the surgeon and that he \u201cultimately refused the organ, which meant we had to reallocate the heart.\u201d<\/p>\n An unnamed medical director acknowledged in the report that this wasn\u2019t the first time a problem had occurred due to staff not properly reading paperwork, with an executive director stating that \u201cWe do not understand the gravity of what we are doing. This is on us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough we [ staff] all talk about accountability, when it comes down to it, none of us seem to want that … we will never learn without significant consequences,\u201d the executive director said.<\/p>\n Testing failure<\/p>\n Another error highlighted in the report involved recording inaccurate test results in September 2024 for a liver that tested positive for a common infection that can be deadly for people with weakened immune systems, such as transplant patients.<\/p>\n The report indicates that the organ procurement organization initially listed the liver as testing negative for cytomegalovirus,<\/a> or CMV, a common virus that stays dormant in the body for life after infection and can sometimes reactivate. The liver actually tested positive, indicating a current or former CMV infection.<\/p>\n The problem was discovered during a pre-allocation huddle and stemmed from the nonprofit lacking \u201cclear policies to ensure that all staff understood how to screen for specified communicable diseases,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n CMV is extremely common. Nearly 1 in 3 children are infected<\/a> with the virus by age 5, with over half of adults infected by age 40, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people will never experience symptoms.<\/p>\n But CMV-positive organs can sometimes cause a new infection<\/a>, or reactivate an existing dormant infection, in transplant patients, increasing the risk of complications, including organ failure and organ rejection.<\/p>\n CMV testing helps doctors create a treatment plan to reduce the risk of complications.<\/p>\n In the liver mix-up, Life Alliance fixed the mistake, notified the transplant center, and the transplant was successful, according to the report.<\/p>\n Staffing shortages<\/p>\n Life Alliance was also struggling to retain staff and ensure they were properly trained. As of May 2025, Life Alliance had a 52% vacancy rate for \u201ccritical\u201d positions needed to \u201cprovide effective oversight of the organ recovery program\u201d and did not have any training specialists on staff, according to the report.<\/p>\n \u201cBased on staff comments related to a lack of training, this current level of staffing will continue to contribute to increased errors in organ allocation, donor management, and verification processes; reduced quality in oversight and compliance monitoring capabilities; and higher risk of policy violations,\u201d the report states.<\/p>\n As of May 2025, Life Alliance did not have \u201csufficient staffing to ensure effective and efficient processes for placement of organs, effective and adequate oversight of organ recovery to provide services to families and hospitals,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n Who is handling organ recovery in South Florida now?<\/p>\n South Florida Donor Network<\/a> officially took over operations from Life Alliance on March 27 and will now be tasked with gathering organs and tissues for South Florida and Bahamian hospitals that offer heart, lung, kidney and other transplants, the Herald has confirmed.<\/p>\n That includes the Miami Transplant Institute, part of Jackson Health System, Miami-Dade\u2019s public hospital network; Nicklaus Children\u2019s Health System; Cleveland Clinic\u2019s Weston hospital; Broward Health Medical Center, part of the Broward Health public hospital system that primarily serves northern Broward; Joe DiMaggio Children\u2019s Hospital and Memorial Transplant Institute, part of Memorial Health System, the public health network that primarily serves southern Broward County.<\/p>\n The group is backed by the not-for-profit Nevada Donor Network that was founded in 1987 and is rated as a \u201cTier 1\u201d organ procurement organization<\/a>, which means it ranks in the top 25% nationally for donation and transplantation rates, based on the federal performance metrics. The South Florida Donor Network lists a local address in Miami Lakes.<\/p>\n \u201cSFDN is committed to delivering seamless, high-quality, and compassionate services by working closely with hospitals, donor families, and community partners to ensure continuity of care and trust throughout the process,\u201d the new organ procurement organization told the Herald in an email. \u201cSFDN is honored to serve the heroic donors, their courageous families, and grateful recipients of the region.\u201d<\/p>\n Michelle Marchante<\/a><\/p>\n Miami Herald<\/p>\n Michelle Marchante covers the pulse of healthcare in South Florida and also the City of Coral Gables. Before that, she covered the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, crime, education, entertainment and other topics in South Florida for the Herald as a breaking news reporter. She recently won first place in the health reporting category in the 2025 Sunshine State Awards for her coverage of Steward Health\u2019s bankruptcy. An investigative series about the abrupt closure of a Miami heart transplant program led Michelle and her colleagues to be recognized as finalists in two 2024 Florida Sunshine State Award categories. She also won second place in the 73rd annual Green Eyeshade Awards for her consumer-focused healthcare stories and was part of the team of reporters who won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for the Miami Herald\u2019s breaking news coverage of the Surfside building collapse. Michelle graduated with honors from Florida International University and was a 2025 National Press Foundation Covering Workplace Mental Health fellow and a 2020-2021 Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism fellow.\u00a0 This map shows the hospitals that were in the service area of the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency. The South Florida Donor Network is now handling this service area. Screenshot of Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency website <\/p>\n
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