Community Regional is one of the top performing hospitals in the country in providing for organ donation. Community has participated in the organ donor program for more than two decades. Nationwide, more than 123,000 people are awaiting organ transplants, including 1,500 in the Central San Joaquin Valley.

The California Transplant Donor Network consulted with Community Regional regarding more than 280 patients in 2012, of whom almost 70 were found to be eligible donors. When all life-saving measures have been exhausted, it is then that the clinical team can shift their focus to the possibility of saving other lives, as well as caring for the surviving family members.
 
Community Regional has one of California’s largest and busiest emergency departments and is home to the region’s only comprehensive burn and Level 1 trauma centers. And every year patients at its Leon S. Peters Burn Center are helped by life-saving skin grafts from more than 150 donors. 
 

Since 2009, more than 590 organs have been transplanted from Community Regional donors, helping to save the lives of nearly 1,500 Valley patients awaiting a transplant. “Community consistently has a higher ‘organs transplanted per donor’ rate than other facilities of similar size,” said Jaclyn Manzanedo, donation services liaison to Community Regional for the California Transplant Donor Network. “It also has the most tissue donors from any hospital we work with.”
 

“You can’t have a donor program unless your staff really cares for the donor families. Whether it’s social services, the chaplaincy or medical staff … all the family’s needs are met throughout the process,” said Manzanedo, whose network includes 175 hospitals and 41 counties in California and Nevada. “Excellent family care is hard-wired into Community Regional’s culture.”
 

Reported by John Taylor, Public Affairs Director. He can be reached at MedWatchToday@communitymedical.org.