HMO failed transplant patients, report says

LOS ANGELES -- Kaiser Permanente's speedy rollout of a vast new kidney transplant program in 2004 overwhelmed regulators with paperwork, putting organs out of reach for hundreds of patients, a newspaper reported yesterday.

The Los Angles Times also said some patients were never told that their transfers from other programs to the HMO's new San Francisco center had not been processed.

The transfer for one patient, Ruben Porras, didn't come through until September 2005 -- 10 months after he was put on inactive status by his previous program, the newspaper reported. Porras died less than a month later.

His wife, Elizabeth, told the Times that Kaiser had given her husband ''a death sentence."

Kaiser had no obligation to notify the United Network for Organ Sharing, the federal contractor that oversees the nation's transplant system, that it would be submitting paperwork for up to 1,500 patients.

United Network officials said this week that they learned of the need to move patients to the giant HMO's new program in September 2004, after it had opened.

The regulators were caught off guard by the flood of paperwork, the Times reported.