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Sacred Heart receives medals of honor

Spokane, Wash. - In May, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded its first ever Organ Donation Medals of Honor to hospitals achieving organ donation rates of 75 percent or higher in a 12-month period. Sacred Heart Medical Center was one of just 184 hospitals nationwide to receive this honor. 

In 2003, the Chaplaincy department at Sacred Heart assumed the lead role in asking eligible patients (or their family members) if they would consider donating organs or tissue.  Since that time, the Medical Center’s rate of converting eligible donors to actual donors has risen from just 43 percent to 80 percent.

Hugh Polensky, Chaplaincy director, says that’s a huge achievement for his staff.  Hugh was one of three Sacred Heart employees to attend the award ceremony hosted by Health and Human Services in Pittsburgh; the others were Pam Hester, manager for Thoracic Transplant, and Dan Ritchie, chaplain. At a Sacred Heart department managers’ meeting last week, President Mike Wilson presented a fourth medal to Tim Stevens, manager of the Kidney Transplant Program.

Representatives of LifeCenter Northwest, the organ procurement organization serving Spokane, attended the managers’ meeting as well to offer congratulations to Sacred Heart for its teamwork and commitment to saving lives. “Your efforts saved 29 lives just in 2004,” said Tammy Graves.  She noted that Sacred Heart is the only hospital in Eastern Washington and one of only four in Washington State to receive the medals of honor.

Also present to thank Sacred Heart for its commitment to organ procurement was Theresa Hawkins, a Spokane mother. Two of her children have recently had heart transplants and her third child has a 50/50 chance of also needing one.

“It’s so important that you keep asking people to donate,” she said.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Administration agrees.  It estimates that in 2002, only 6,617 (46 percent) of 14,000 potential donors actually donated organs.  As a result, an average of 17 people on the transplant waiting list die each day. 

For information about becoming an organ donor, please visit LifeCenter Northwest on the web at www.lcnw.org.


At a glance: Transplants at Sacred Heart:

  • The Thoracic Transplant Program coordinated transplants for 14 patients in 2004.  (In 1999, Sacred Heart’s program was named a “top heart transplant program” in the U.S. for its one-year survival rate.  In a study by the Department of Health and Human Services, nearly 94 percent of Sacred Heart patients survived the first year on the heart transplant waiting list compared to a national average of 76 percent.)
  • The Kidney Transplant Program coordinated and performed transplants for 68 patients in 2004.  The program attracts patients with end-stage renal disease from many states who seek care from an experienced team of transplant-trained physicians, surgeons, nurse coordinators and support staff. Since the program’s first transplant in 1981, nearly 850 people have benefited from this life-changing procedure.

For more about the Organ Donation medals of honor, visit the Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration  at http://newsroom.hrsa.gov.

 

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