Loyola Medical Center Sued Over Alleged Unsafe Organ Transplants 

Loyola University Medical Center is being sued for allegedly performing unsafe organ transplants and inflating transplant costs to maximize Medicare billings. The lawsuit, filed by a former hospital official, alleges Loyola’s practices are a part of a bigger, systematic scheme which for over 10 years has been “defrauding the United States for their own personal gain,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was first filed in a Texas federal court in 2023 by Patrek Chase, the former executive director for Loyola Medical Center’s Solid Organ Transplant Programs and Outpatient Dialysis Clinic. Chase was hired in 2020 but was asked to resign only two years later in retaliation after he raised concerns about increased organ transplant failures and deaths, according to the lawsuit.

“During his tenure at Loyola, Chase directly witnessed that Loyola was also not running a safe transplant program,” the lawsuit reads. “Instead, it wanted to get as much volume as possible to increase reimbursement from Medicare, even if it meant improperly transplanting patients who were not eligible for an organ transplant.”

The lawsuit said Loyola surgeons would regularly ignore the concerns raised by the hospital’s social work and psychiatric teams regarding whether a patient might be unfit for an organ transplant. For example, if a patient experiences liver failure caused by excessive alcohol use, the patient must show to a social work team a period of sobriety or be otherwise approved by the team. The lawsuit said Loyola ignored this procedure and moved forward with the transplant.

“In one instance, Loyola transplanted a liver into a patient with alcoholic liver disease and unresolved alcohol use problems. The lawsuit alleges the patient did not get better and stayed in the hospital for 128 days.”

When Chase brought up this instance to hospital officials, his concerns were dismissed and he was told risks have to be taken to increase transplant volume, according to the lawsuit.

When it came to recording transplant data, the lawsuit said Loyola kept multiple books to conceal high organ donation failure rates. The only dataset which reflected actual donation failure rates was used strictly for internal reports.

Chase was also one of few hospital officials given access to an Excel file that listed organ transplants in even more detail that Chase was told “not to share with anyone externally,” according to the lawsuit.

The only dataset officials outside Loyola could access was their Electronic Medical Record, Epic. Here, Loyola would misrepresent information regarding organ donation failures to hide how often these failures occurred, according to the lawsuit.

“For example, if Loyola did a failed transplant where the patient died in the operating room, the internal records would call it a graft failure and transplant related death,” the lawsuit read. “However, Loyola did not record this as an official transplant death in Epic, claiming the transplant ‘technically never worked or achieved anastomosis.’”

The lawsuit said Loyola fraudulently double billed Medicare by submitting both costs on their reports to Medicare and billing services to Medicare directly, effectively doubling the reimbursement received from Medicare. Loyola also inflated staff’s time on its cost reports to increase the funds received from Medicare for staff salaries, according to the lawsuit.

Loyola hired consulting company Transplant Solutions in 2021 to review its transplant program and financial operations, and their report made numerous references to issues with Loyola’s cost reports, according to the lawsuit.

In addition to finding evidence of double billing, “Transplant Solutions found that patients are billed for their deductible and coinsurance for pre-transplant evaluations when these costs should go on the cost report,” according to the lawsuit.

Executives held a meeting following Chase’s concerns. Chase was not included in the meeting, the lawsuit alleges. Chase was told the issue was fixed when he inquired about the meeting, he saw no evidence of such. Soon after, Chase was asked to resign from his position, according to the lawsuit. 

The university didn’t respond to The Phoenix’s requests for comment.