San Diego hospital sanctioned

The Sharp Memorial Hospital of San Diego, Calif., has been publicly sanctioned and put on probation by the federal contractor in charge of transplant programs.

The United Network for Organ Sharing took action against Sharp after revealing that the hospital had not performed any pancreas transplants in more than a year, despite a growing waiting list, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday. The hospital became the third in the country -- and the state -- to be publicly sanctioned by UNOS.

Sue McDiarmid, UNOS president and a pediatric liver transplant specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center, said: "There were patients on the waiting list who had not been informed" of the transplant program's inactivity in 2006 and much of 2005.

Dan Gross, executive vice president of hospital operations for Sharp HealthCare, said the program had been inactive because the hospital's pancreas surgeon had been called up for active military duty. However, he said a replacement has been recruited.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International