This bill directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services, through the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, to conduct a study on hospitals' use of electronic automated referrals for organ donation. The study must be completed not later than 1 year after the bill becomes law. The Secretary must submit a report to the House Committees on Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means and the Senate Committees on Finance and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
The bill lists specific study tasks. The study must:
The bill defines "electronic automated referral" as an electronic system that finds potential deceased organ donors using clinical criteria in a patient's EHR and automatically refers those patients to the hospital's collaborating organ procurement organization.
The bill requires only a federal study and a report within one year. It does not itself change hospital procedures, create new requirements, or change how organs are recovered or allocated. No publicly available information on immediate changes to hospitals, patients, or organ procurement organizations is included in the bill text.
No publicly available information on costs, funding, or appropriations is included in the bill text.
The bill directs the study to look for staff-time savings, possible improvements in timeliness and donor identification, benefits from using EHRs and standardized clinical criteria, effects on donation volumes, secure IT practices, and steps to promote nationwide use. These study goals are the outcomes the bill asks HHS to examine and report.
No publicly available information on opposition or objections is included in the bill text or metadata.