Officials of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., are seeking approval from state regulators to start offering liver transplants and raising competition with Washington, D.C.-based MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, which holds the only liver transplant program in the area, according to the Washington Business Journal.
Officials say competition from Suburban Hospital, which is owned by Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins, would increase access to liver transplants and improve outcomes in the greater Washington, D.C., area. MedStar Georgetown officials dispute this claim, according to the report.
If they obtain a certificate of need, Suburban Hospital officials estimate the hospital will conduct more than 40 liver transplants a year by 2021, which they say would reduce the volume of transplants conducted at MedStar Georgetown and programs at Johns Hopkins Hospital and University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. However, the overall number of transplants in the region would increase.
The proposed program would cost about $4.8 million in the first year but increase to $11.6 million by its fifth year. Suburban Hospital estimates each case would cost about $148,208, or nearly $6 million for 40 new cases over five years, according to the report.
MedStar Georgetown officials, which dispute Suburban's claims that another liver transplant program in the region is necessary, note its Georgetown Transplant Institute is ranked by CMS in the top 10 percent of transplant programs in the U.S. It also has the shortest wait time to transplant and the highest volume of minority transplant recipients in the region, as well as the second-largest pediatric liver transplant program in the nation.