Caring for patients who became organ and tissue donors in a neurological intensive care unit more than 30 years ago inspired Jill Grandas to dedicate her career to carrying out the lifesaving wishes of organ donors and their families at Tennessee Donor Services, an organ procurement organization (OPO) that serves nearly 5.5 million people.
As a guest columnist for the Tennessean, Grandas told one such story demonstrating the healing power of donation for donor families, as well as patients whose lives are saved. Grandas shared that she is concerned that the “people in need of transplants will fall through holes” created by proposed rules that could decertify OPOs “based on arbitrary benchmarks determined by faulty data from a single report concocted by a special-interest group.”
Read Grandas’ Sept. 13 guest column, in which she encourages readers to join her in calling for rules that help improve the entire organ donation and transplant system.
Jill Grandas is executive director of Tennessee Donor Services, the Nashville-based OPO that serves most of Tennessee, as well as Virginia, Georgia and Kentucky.
