State police program changes organ donor notification system.

Byline: Rebecca Nolan The Register-Guard

Until recently, carrying a signed donor card with your Oregon driver's license wasn't enough to guarantee an organ or tissue donation in case of a fatal traffic accident.

Before Oregon State Police launched a new donor notification program this month, only the families of people who died in hospitals were offered the chance to save a life by donating vital organs and tissue to people in need.

Hospital deaths account for only one-third of all deaths in Oregon.

So far this year, state troopers have responded to 160 fatal wrecks that have killed about 200 people. Statewide, 409 people have died in traffic crashes in 2005.

That's a lot of missed opportunities to turn tragedy into triumph, state police patrol Capt. Gerry Gregg said.

"We realized that there was a gap in the system. If somebody died in a fatal crash, when the death occurred outside the hospital, there was no notification made to the donor program," Gregg said. "I think everybody was mistakenly thinking that the donor code on licenses set the wheels in motion for this to happen."

Inspired by a Washington State Patrol program, Gregg worked with the Lions Eye Bank of Oregon to help create a new system for notifying Oregon's donor programs of possible donors involved in traffic crashes.

Now, upon learning of a traffic fatality, state police dispatchers contact donor agencies and share basic information, such as the location of the crash, the circumstances of death, the sex, age and name of the victim.

Donor program officials wait until the medical examiner gives the go-ahead before approaching the victim's family. Timing is critical in cases of organ harvest, Gregg said.

The system will also help families fulfill their loved one's wishes to donate, said Corrina Patzer, spokeswoman for the Lions Eye Bank.

"Families often call days after an accident to tell us their loved one wanted to be a donor and ask us why they were never offered donation," Patzer said. "Our only response has been that we were unaware of the death."

The program has been a great success in Washington since state patrol Detective Steve Stockwell started it in November 2003. As of Sept. 1 this year, the Washington program had prompted 18 tissue and 45 cornea donations.

Stockwell first recognized the problem when the father of a crash victim asked him to make sure his son's organs were donated.

The detective thought it would be easy enough to accomplish. It wasn't.

"I finally got it done after about a million phone calls because nobody knew what to do," he said. "That's when I took this on as a project."

State police in Montana and Idaho have launched similar programs thanks to Stockwell's work, and Wyoming and Colorado are considering following suit.

It makes sense that Oregon would be proactive on the issue. More than 1.4 million Oregonians have signed donor cards, making the state one of the most pro-donation in the country, state police said. More than 900,000 transplants are performed in the United States each year, from skin grafts for burn victims to bone shafts for cancer patients to corneas for sight restoration.