Katherine Screws received a rare intestine transplant in June 2025 after waiting three years following a car crash, highlighting systemic communication gaps and hospital disparities in the U.S. organ transplant system. While over 49,000 transplants occurred in 2025, around 20% of donated organs go unused. Hospital acceptance rates vary up to 16-fold, prompting new patient-facing tools on the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients database.
Katherine Screws' intestine transplant
- ▪Katherine Screws received an intestine transplant at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital in June 2025, three years after a May 2022 car crash required the removal of her small intestine.
- ▪Katherine Screws registered at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital as a second transplant center in 2025 and received an intestine from a donor in Chicago within weeks of double listing.
- ▪Katherine Screws was one of 88 people in the United States to receive an intestine transplant in 2025.
- ▪OneLegacy made nine organ offers for Katherine Screws during 2024 that were all declined by her initial transplant team at UCLA Health.
Variations in hospital organ acceptance
- ▪A published study revealed that kidney transplant candidates who died while waiting had a median of 25 organ offers declined by their transplant teams.
- ▪Dr. Syed Ali Husain of NYU Langone Health noted a 16-fold variation in how quickly kidney transplant patients receive organs across different U.S. transplant centers.
- ▪Hospitals vary in organ acceptance due to differences in surgeon experience with complex organ anatomy, older donors, and concerns over regulatory performance scores.
Tools and guidance for transplant candidates
- ▪The Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients database features personalized decision guides and center volume rankings to help patients evaluate multi-listing options.
- ▪Dr. Allyson Hart of Minnesota's Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute stated that most transplant candidates lack clear guidance on wait times and hospital selection options.
- ▪Dr. Allyson Hart helped design patient-accessible search tools for the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients database to help candidates compare hospital wait times and outcomes.
Organ retrieval and matching
- ▪Organ procurement organizations enter suitable donor information into a national automated matching system, which generates prioritized match lists for transplant teams to evaluate quickly.
- ▪Transplant surgeons often travel personally to harvest delicate donor organs rather than relying on local medical teams to retrieve and ship them.
Organ procurement organization regulations
- ▪Several organ procurement organizations, including OneLegacy, joined lawsuits seeking to block proposed federal closures under a controversial government performance grading system.
- ▪Organ procurement organizations receive mandatory donor recovery mandates but rarely receive direct inquiries or outreach from prospective organ recipients on waiting lists.
Reducing organ waste
- ▪Medicare initiated a pilot program offering financial incentives and penalties to encourage hospitals to perform more kidney transplants and reduce organ waste.
- ▪Approximately 20% of donated human organs in the United States go unused, primarily because matching recipients are not located before the organs deteriorate.
National transplant statistics
- ▪Surgeons performed more than 27,000 kidney transplants in the United States in 2025, making kidneys the most frequently transplanted organ.
- ▪More than 49,000 organ transplants were performed in the United States in 2025, while approximately 100,000 candidates remained on national waiting lists.
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