AOPO Outgoing Presidential Address

Lloyd Jordan

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

June 4, 2003

Good morning, I would like to welcome everyone to Philadelphia for the 20^th Annual AOPO meeting.  The Program Committee has put together an excellent program and I hope everyone enjoys the meeting. 

Because of the hard work of Paul and the Executive Office staff, along with AOPO’s many workgroups, AOPO’s advocacy of organ and tissue donation continues to be quite successful.  I am pleased to report that this year your Association was able to make progress in many areas where groundwork had already been laid.

We were successful in obtaining broader community acceptance of the science of donation concept.  This is evidenced by the fact that detailed provisions authored by AOPO were included in the re-introduced Senate bill by Senator Frist.  Additionally, the American Society of Transplantation (AST) endorsed this concept as part of its legislative and public policy program.

AOPO achieved success in influencing public policy regarding the concept of shared accountability as it relates to donation. 

The Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Transplantation adopted an important recommendation to advance strong government encouragement to large hospitals to treat missed potential donors or lack of a timely referral of such donors to OPOs as a serious medical error.  There was a parallel recommendation to JCAHO and I am pleased to report that JCAHO will be sponsoring an organ donation roundtable meeting scheduled for June 25 and our AOPO Medical Advisor and Executive Director have been invited to participate.

 

The Division of Transplantation, URREA, and the UNOS Research Division have all begun to use the concept of “donation service area” in their presentations and analytical reports.

The Association has continued to recognize that our demographics are rapidly changing and how important it is to stay on top of these changes because of their impact on donation. 

Our Task Force on Multi-cultural Issues has been charged to address diversity issues and increase consent among minority populations.  It has been a goal of your Association to integrate their work throughout the Association’s activities in such areas as accreditation, data collection and hospital development.  I am pleased to report that this integration has started to occur.

We also completed our first AOPO video on recruitment of minority professionals and distributed it to all OPOs.

Last year, I laid several goals for this year and I stated, “first and foremost, AOPO must be ready to address the pending notice of proposed rulemaking with regard to the certification process”.  Well, my priority for this goal could have been different because as we all know, this matter is still pending.  However, the Association remains ready to respond to the notice of proposed rulemaking with regard to the certification process whenever it is released. 

Another goal I stated was to make sure that AOPO had a serious focus on what our Association could do to improve donation.  I listed the purpose of our new Technical Assistance Program as a service to help our members improve their services and hopefully to improve their donation rates.  Tim Jankiewicz has done an excellent job in spearheading these efforts and I am pleased to report that two of our members have gone through this process and a number of others have expressed an interest in this service. 

I also discussed how the landscape of tissue donation was changing and the potential impacts these changes could have on us as organ procurement organizations.  I would like to thank Lynn Driver and Pat Brewster for their efforts in preparing a white paper addressing what we can do as OPOs to maintain the public trust in today’s new and changing environment.  This white paper has generated a great deal of good work and relationship building.  In addition to being shared with our members, it has been shared with the EBAA, AATB, National Funeral Home Association, and our sponsors.

Finally, I listed as a goal to have at least five non-accredited members apply for accreditation in the upcoming year.  I believe because of a lot of hard work of way too many people to name, that the accreditation survey process is a very valuable service that AOPO offers.  I would like to thank both Paul O’Flynn and Diane Chandler for their efforts in keeping this momentum going and for their leadership.  I am pleased to report six previously non-accredited members applied for accreditation this past year.   I congratulate Pat Giordano and the Texas Organ Sharing Alliance and Dr. D’Allessandro and the University of Wisconsin OPO for applying as a first timer and becoming accredited during the last year. My OPO has a scheduled site visit in two weeks and I look forward to undergoing the accreditation process.

While I did not list this as one of my goals last year, I am extremely excited and pleased to report about the successful revitalization of our Medical Directors Council.  The input from our Medical Directors is a valued resource that will only strengthen AOPO and I would like to thank Marty Mozes and Frank Delmonico for all of their hard work and efforts in revitalizing the Medical Directors Council.

There are many other noteworthy accomplishments that have been achieved over the last year by our various workgroups and Executive Office staff.  I personally would like to thank everyone who has participated in one of the AOPO workgroups and encourage future participation.  I would also like to thank Paul Schwab and the entire staff in our Executive Office.  It is primarily because of the hard work of Paul and his staff that AOPO is clearly recognized as the organization to turn to whenever there are national issues relating to organ donation.

I would also like to give a special thank you to Helen Leslie who filled in on my behalf over a period of several weeks during March when I was tied up .  Helen graciously stepped in, along with Paul and the Executive Committee, and responded very effectively to what was occurring during this time.  I would like to thank each of you who called or sent notes or cards to me during this time.  I am all truly blessed to have my job; not only because of what our organization does, but also because of all the people I am fortunate enough to know as colleagues.

Finally, I would like to thank the entire CDS team for all of their support during the last year.  A special thanks goes to Linda Faulkner, my Administrative Assistant, Burt Mattice, our Vice President of Operations/COO, Kirk Mizelle, our Vice President of Finance, and Jane Corrado, our Director of Communications/Marketing.

Thank you for your support and for allowing me the honor and privilege of serving as your President.