Numerous and ongoing patient safety failures have led to the US Health & Human Services department launching the decertification process for Network for Hope, the organ procurement organisation serving several regions, reports Becker’s Hospital Review.
The group operates in a number of areas in Kentucky and parts of Indiana, Ohio and West Virginia.
The move follows independent reviews by both the federal Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Health Resources and Services Administration. CMS’ review found continued quality concerns tied to donor evaluation, adverse event review and administration.
Network for Hope disputed the decision in a statement to Becker’s, and said it would appeal, and that it is compliant with all Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) policies.
Network for Hope has faced scrutiny for nearly two years. In September 2024, a former employee told a House subcommittee that supervisors pressured staff to retrieve organs from a patient who was awake and later left the hospital alive, prompting an investigation by the Kentucky Attorney-General into the organisation’s retrieval tactics. It denied any wrongdoing.
In 2025, HRSA released findings that between 2021 and 2024, the administration examined 351 cases in which organ donation was authorised but not completed.
The agency found 103 of those cases, or about 29%, showed concerning features, including 73 patients with neurological signs incompatible with organ donation.
HRSA also raised questions about whether some potential donors were actually dead when organ procurement began, along with issues involving neurologic assessments, care team co-ordination, consent practices and cause-of-death classification in overdose cases.
Network for Hope disputed the report, citing a CMS compliance notice.
In 2025, those findings led HRSA to direct OPTN to place Network for Hope on a corrective action plan and monitoring programme. HRSA and CMS each ran independent reviews to determine whether Network for Hope had fixed its problems, and both concluded it had not made sufficient improvement.
CMS administrator Mehmet Oz, MD, said the decertification is meant to send a message to every provider participating in CMS programmes about accountability for patient safety and taxpayers’ money.
This is a rare move for HHS, which had decertified an organ procurement organisation for the first time only in September 2025, when CMS pulled Medicare participation from Miami’s Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency over years of unsafe practices, understaffing and paperwork errors.
Network for Hope’s decertification marks the second such action nationally.
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