Through the high demand of organs, UNOS devised a plan to distribute the organs:.
UNOS relies on a regional system to allocate organs. The agency divides the nation into 11 regions. Transplant candidates are categorized by the severity of their illness, with "Status 1" patients those considered closest to death. When an organ becomes available, it is offered to sickest person on the list.
The organs are first offered within an immediate local service area. If it is not needed there, it is offered region-wide. Patients advance regional lists as their conditions worsen and according to their time on the list. The decisions, when made, often seem incredibly unfair. Patients who are less ill than others often get transplants, whilst others die waiting for a donor to appear. For example in Ohio the median waiting time for Blood Type O kidney patients is approximately 204 days in one part of the state. 1,422 days in another. This system obviously does not pass even the most rudimentary of ethical tests, and it is clearly very unfair that patients living in different parts of a state should be treated so differently, not when the stakes are so high.
If the first ranked person in the region cannot accept then the organ, the organ is then offered to lesser ill patients in that region. A higher ranked person may be passed over if he or she is not available for surgery immediately. Also, an organ and a recipients blood group, tissue type and for some organs approximate body weight, must be matched. If no recipient can be matched with an organ within a region, the organ is then offered to the national pool. (Organ Allocation) Although with organized plans to allocate organs, the UNOS ran into controversy over the distribution of organs.
UNOS policies have stirred debate throughout the medical field, mostly by the doctors who felt that their patients were being ignored. The problem lies within the way UNOS distributes the organs.