Health Care 2024: MAUREEN H. McBRIDE

Safe to say, it’s a stressful time to be the CEO of UNOS, the Richmond nonprofit that has managed the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) for more than four decades.

In March, members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce — among them U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Christiansburg — launched a bipartisan investigation into UNOS with a stated goal of passing legislation that would spread the OPTN management contract award to multiple contractors instead of just one organization: UNOS. Some legislators sent McBride a letter this spring, in which the nonprofit was criticized for overseeing an organ donation system that is “unsafe, inequitable, self-dealing and retaliatory.”

Although UNOS’ woes — including Senate and White House investigations in recent years — predate McBride’s two-year tenure as CEO, she has been with the organ network since 1995, when she took a position as senior biostatistician. In 2014, she became the nonprofit’s chief operating officer overseeing the federal OPTN contract. She stepped up as interim CEO in 2022 and was named permanent head of the organization seven months later.

UNOS facilitated 46,000 organ transplants in 2023, including a record 10,660 liver transplants.