New York Times: Hospitals Cater to ‘Transplant Tourists’ as U.S. Patients Wait for Organs

Irene Gebrael was an Arabic interpreter at Montefiore when, she said, she had an idea: If the hospital recruited international patients, it could serve a broader population – and make a lot of money. 

“The hospital is always happy about the international rates,” Ms. Gebrael said in an interview. “Trust me.” 

In 2013, she said, she persuaded hospital executives to start an international office. It was good timing for the transplant program. 

For decades, hospitals that gave more than 5 percent of any organ type to “noncitizen nonresidents” could be audited and possibly penalized. But leaders of the transplant system ended that in 2012, concerned that it could lead to discrimination against undocumented immigrants, a group that commonly donated organs. (The Times analysis did not include patients who traveled to the United States for reasons other than transplants, such as immigrants.) 

Since then, Montefiore, a modest transplant program in a low-income section of New York City, has increasingly treated international patients, which Ms. Gebrael said generated tens 

of millions of dollars in revenue. From 2020 to 2024, it provided organs to 49 such patients, the third most of any U.S. hospital. 

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