OneLegacy Sets New National Record for Organ Donors

Support for lifesaving organ donation and transplants continues to rise at a record-setting pace in Southern California, with the nonprofit OneLegacy announcing an 11% increase in organ donors to an all-time national record 721 donors and a 13% increase in successful organ transplants to 1,840.

OneLegacy’s 2023 growth continues a 12-year trend that has seen an 84% increase in organ donors and a 48% increase in organs that surgeons have accepted for transplant. It was fueled by OneLegacy’s investment in its highly skilled and culturally diverse staff, which grew 30% to over 425 full-time employees in 2023 to ensure faster response to referrals, service to hospital colleagues, and most importantly to provide more time and support to donor families.

"Thanks to our caring and dedicated team of donation professionals and our colleagues in hospitals across the region, we were able to help a record number of donors and their families leave a lifesaving legacy in 2023,” said OneLegacy CEO Prasad Garimella. “We are immensely grateful for each donor and their families who have said ‘YES’ to organ, eye and tissue donation, saving and healing thousands of lives in Southern California and across the nation.”

The growth in organs transplanted that outpaced the significant increase in donors was enabled by the OneLegacy Transplant Recovery Center at its headquarters in Azusa, where 43% (313) of OneLegacy’s 721 organ donations were recovered. The recently opened Azusa Recovery Center is the world’s largest, most comprehensive center of its kind, with 24/7 onsite access to the most sophisticated intensive care, diagnostic imaging, and operating rooms, equipment, and services, including the only independent recovery center helipad in the nation.

OneLegacy’s investment in creating the Azusa Recovery Center has had an immediate impact on the availability of organ transplantation. Access to clinical services, the ability to schedule recovery procedures to meet the needs of waiting recipients and surgeons without being subject to unpredictable hospital emergency needs that often delay recoveries, plus 24-hour on-site family social worker services enabled 25% more organs to be successfully transplanted as compared to similar recoveries in hospitals.

In 2023 OneLegacy and its area transplant centers that serve the most diverse population in the nation also had one of the nation’s highest rates of equity of access, with 66% of OneLegacy’s Organ Donors being Persons of Color and 76% of transplants at the region’s center going to patients who are persons of color. This outcome is a testament to the skill and dedication of staff throughout Southern California’s 215+ hospitals and OneLegacy’s commitments to collaborating with the diverse communities we serve to ensure the lifesaving benefits of organ donation and transplantation are shared in a common cause benefiting everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, and socio-economic factors and collaboration with the many communities served. This collaboration is a multi-year effort by OneLegacy to overcome barriers of income, language, culture or immigration status to promote and enable access to transplantation and donor registration to meet the needs of each of the communities that make up this richly diverse region.

2023 also saw a dramatic 19% increase in lifesaving and healing tissue recoveries of heart valves, vessels, bone, skin, and corneas, from 1,777 in 2022 to 2,119 in 2023, as the need for such grafts grew post-COVID. These 2,119 tissue donors made possible 160,000+ tissue transplants. This tissue transplant rate is amongst the highest in the nation due to OneLegacy’s dedicated tissue recovery facilities at its Azusa and Redlands Recovery Centers.

OneLegacy’s CEO Garimella projects that OneLegacy’s continued investments in uniquely skilled and trained staff will continue this dramatic growth by ensuring that every family and every registered donor in the vast Southern California region OneLegacy serves is given the opportunity to Donate Life. “We look forward to working closely with local donor hospital partners and transplant centers so more lives can be saved and healed in 2024,” says Garimella.

About OneLegacy

OneLegacy is the nonprofit organization dedicated to saving lives through organ, eye and tissue donation in seven counties in Southern California: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Kern. It serves more than 200 hospitals, 10 transplant centers, a diverse population of 20 million donors and families across the region and waiting recipients across the country. Becoming an eye, organ or tissue donor is easy and can be done by registering online at donateLIFEcalifornia.org/OneLegacy or by “checking YES” at your local DMV. For more information, visit OneLegacy.org

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