Adult heart transplants to resume at Jackson’s Miami Transplant Institute
Jackson Memorial Hospital will soon resume adult heart transplants after receiving the OK on Wednesday from the national transplant network that urged them to suspend the program back in March after the group received at least one complaint about “preventable” patient deaths.
The Miami Transplant Institute — part of Jackson Health System, the public hospital network in Miami-Dade County — received the news while in Detroit for a progress meeting with the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit that operates the country’s organ transplant system for the federal government. Among those attending the meeting: Carlos Migoya, Jackson Health CEO; Dr. Rodrigo Vianna, director of the institute; and Dr. Chris Ghaemmaghami, chief physician executive and chief clinical officer, Jackson Health.
“While the details of the meeting are required to be kept confidential under medical peer review, leaders from Jackson Health System and MTI received the committee’s support of our plan to move forward with reactivation of the program,” said Krysten Brenlla, a Jackson spokesperson, in an emailed statement to the Herald.
Leadership at the institute will ”methodically execute a reopening plan that includes expeditiously re-evaluating patients who were previously placed on inactive status for heart transplantation,” said Brenlla.
Back in March, Luke Preczewski, vice president of the Miami Transplant Institute, announced the voluntary suspension of the adult heart transplant program in a staff Zoom meeting, noting the news would not be shared with the public. The Herald independently learned about the suspension, which prompted Jackson to confirm.
The hospital told the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that the review of its temporarily shuttered adult heart transplant program was expected to take six to eight weeks, according to an email obtained by the Miami Herald through a Freedom of Information Request. The shutdown lasted four months.
Investigation by national organ network
The suspension came after the transplant network sent a letter to the hospital urging the suspension while the organ network nonprofit performed an investigation. The investigation, prompted by at least one anonymous complaint the network had received, involved a peer review of the hospital’s heart transplant program in April.
The complaint, reviewed by the Herald, detailed deaths that Jackson whistleblowers considered preventable and named Dr. Anita Phancao, a cardiologist who headed the heart-failure team that collaborates closely with the transplant surgeons before and after heart transplant and pump implant procedures. The complaint also blamed issues on Dr. Matthias Loebe, who was the head of heart transplant surgery at the time.
One of the deaths detailed in the complaint is that of Miami hairdresser Frank Ricigliano, 56, who underwent heart transplant surgery in 2021 and died less than three months later.
After the heart transplant program’s suspension was confirmed, Jackson and Institute leaders met with a team of Herald reporters and editors and said they had also received anonymous complaints. They noted they wanted to put together a stronger team to lead the program.
Loebe had been the chief of heart transplant surgery but he had received a letter in October 2022 that he would no longer serve as chief, effective February 2023. But Loebe continued in the role for weeks thereafter — that is, until Jackson confirmed to the Herald in April that he was “no longer seeing patients.”
Loebe joined the Miami Transplant Institute in 2015 after being recruited from the Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center in Texas. It remains unclear whether he is still employed by the University of Miami. Doctors at the institute are employed by the University of Miami and work at Jackson as part of a partnership between the two. The University of Miami has declined to comment on personnel matters.
Leadership overhaul at Miami Transplant Institute
The adult heart transplant program at the institute has undergone an overhaul since its closure four months ago. In May, Dr. Joshua Hare, a leader in stem cell treatments at UM, was named interim chief of heart failure for both Jackson and the University of Miami Health System, with Dr. Leonardo Mulinari as the new interim chief of heart transplants. The doctors replaced Phancao and Loebe, respectively.
Regulators with the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, along with the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees hospitals in the state, also visited the transplant center in April to conduct a surprise inspection of its adult and pediatric heart, adult lung and adult kidney transplant programs. Their visits came after they received at least one complaint about possible noncompliance with federal health and safety regulations. They found no deficiencies and determined that the programs were complying with federal requirements for Medicare/Medicaid-certified providers.
In her statement, Brenlla said since deactivating the program in March, the institute had “implemented changes focused on leadership, enhanced teamwork and communication, and process improvement — all aimed at elevating the heart transplant program to the same level of excellence as our other organ transplant programs.”
A new surgical leader to permanently replace Loebe will be announced soon, hospital leaders said during the most recent Public Health Trust meeting in late June.
