Mount Sinai Health System Participates in White House Summit on Organ Transplant
Sander S. Florman, MD, Director of the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute at Mount Sinai, participated today in an Organ Summit hosted by the White House in Washington, DC, as part of an effort to build on the Obama administration’s previous accomplishments to improve outcomes for individuals waiting for organ transplants and improve support for living donors.
At the summit, senior administration officials converged with representatives from hospitals, universities, companies, foundations, and patient advocacy organizations to announce a new set of actions that will serve as another essential step towards increasing access to organ transplants and reducing the organ waiting list.
Together with seven other academic medical centers, Mount Sinai Health System created a Blue Ribbon Advisory Panel committed to establishing a national clearinghouse of educational resources about transplant and living donation for patients, living donors and the interested public. Making previously privately held resources available to the public, the goal of this Panel is to ensure informed transplant and living donation decision-making and equity in access to quality information to combat barriers that research suggests limits access to transplants.
Resources will be made publicly available by the end of the summer of 2017.
“The availability of organs for transplantation has been far exceeded by the need, while the waiting lists continue to grow at a staggering pace, so we must find ways to increase the donor supply and to encourage living donation,” says Dr. Florman. “People’s lives literally depend on these efforts and so I commend President Obama and his administration for shining a spotlight on these issues. I am proud to participate with leaders from government, industry, patient advocacy groups and my colleagues in the transplant community to improve donation.”
About the Mount Sinai Health System
Mount Sinai Health System is one of the largest academic medical systems in the New York metro area, with more than 43,000 employees working across eight hospitals, over 400 outpatient practices, nearly 300 labs, a school of nursing, and a leading school of medicine and graduate education. Mount Sinai advances health for all people, everywhere, by taking on the most complex health care challenges of our time — discovering and applying new scientific learning and knowledge; developing safer, more effective treatments; educating the next generation of medical leaders and innovators; and supporting local communities by delivering high-quality care to all who need it.
Through the integration of its hospitals, labs, and schools, Mount Sinai offers comprehensive health care solutions from birth through geriatrics, leveraging innovative approaches such as artificial intelligence and informatics while keeping patients’ medical and emotional needs at the center of all treatment. The Health System includes approximately 7,300 primary and specialty care physicians; 13 joint-venture outpatient surgery centers throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Long Island, and Florida; and more than 30 affiliated community health centers. We are consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals, receiving high "Honor Roll" status, and are highly ranked: No. 1 in Geriatrics and top 20 in Cardiology/Heart Surgery, Diabetes/Endocrinology, Gastroenterology/GI Surgery, Neurology/Neurosurgery, Orthopedics, Pulmonology/Lung Surgery, Rehabilitation, and Urology. New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai is ranked No. 12 in Ophthalmology. U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals” ranks Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital among the country’s best in several pediatric specialties.
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