Richard (Rick) D. Hasz, Jr., MFS, CPTC, is Vice President of Clinical Services of Philadelphia-based Gift of Life Donor Program, one of the oldest and largest of the 57 organ procurement organizations (OPO) in the United States. He began working at Gift of Life in 1993 as a Transplant Coordinator and has served as the program’s Vice President of Clinical Services since 1999.  On January 4, 2022, Rick will assume the role of President & CEO when Howard M. Nathan retires and transitions to his new role as Executive Director of the Gift of Life Foundation.

As Gift of Life’s Vice President of Clinical Services, Rick leads day-to-day clinical operations for the most active organ procurement organization (OPO) in the United States, with clinical programs that include Transplant Coordination, Hospital Development, Organ Preservation, Eye Bank, Donation and Transplant Analytics, Quality Assurance and Tissue Recovery. His career encompasses more than 30 years of life-saving work in the organ donation and transplantation field.

Under Rick’s leadership, the Clinical Services team works 24/7 to address the critical need for organs for transplant, working daily with donor families, medical professionals, hospital administrators and others in the donation and transplant community to promote and increase opportunities for donation. 

Gift of Life’s Clinical Services team is widely recognized for developing the nation’s best practices in organ and tissue donation.  For each of the past 13 consecutive years, Gift of Life has led the nation in the most organ donors among all U.S. OPOs. 

As a respected expert, Rick has delivered lectures and education sessions for more than 60 organizations and professional societies in the United States and internationally and has participated in publishing hundreds of scientific papers and abstracts about donation and transplantation during his career. He also serves as a faculty member at Gift of Life Institute which trains best practices to OPO professionals worldwide.

In addition to his outstanding clinical outcomes and scholarship in the field, Rick has worked jointly with numerous investigators from a host of prestigious government, academic medical and nonprofit institutions on innovative research aimed at advancing health science and saving lives.  Rick served as lead investigator for Gift of Life and played a vital role working with the National Disease Research Interchange (NDRI), on the Genotype-Tissue Expression Project to produce biospecimens for a National Institutes of Health research initiative to investigate how genetic variation may relate to gene expression and its correlation with disease.

Working in collaboration with leading academic medical centers, Rick played an important role in facilitating pioneering protocols to support Vascular Composite Allograft donation and transplant initiatives involving bilateral pediatric hand transplants, uterus donation, the first U.S. African American face transplant and the world’s first successful face and bilateral hand transplants.

For years, Rick has continued to provide valued input as a member of many national donation and transplant leadership committees.  He was recently elected to serve as a member of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations (AOPO) Executive Committee and has served as President of the American Board for Transplant Certification. In addition, Rick has contributed to numerous United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) committees including the Disease Transmission and Advisory Group, Liver and Intestinal Transplantation Committee, and the Membership and Professional Standards Committee.  He also chaired the UNOS Operations and Safety Committee.

Rick has shared his knowledge and expertise with government and other national organizations.  He served as a faculty member for the HRSA Breakthrough Collaborative and has provided expert testimony for National Academy of Sciences on Organ Donor Intervention Research, Donation after Circulatory Death and most recently on a Fairer and More Equitable, Cost-Effective, and Transparent System of Donor Organ Procurement, Allocation and Distribution.  He also provided testimony to the HHS Advisory Committee on Blood & Tissue Safety & Availability.  Rick recently served as a technical expert panel member for the CMS Kidney Transplant Initiative.

Rick holds membership in the North American Transplant Coordinators Organization, The American Society of Transplant Surgeons, and The American Association of Tissue Banks. He is a member of the City of Philadelphia, Department of Public Health, Institutional Review Board.  He served as a board member of Community Blood Center/Community Tissue Services and has served on the Transplant Alliance’s Donor Management Leadership Council.

Rick has a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Forensic Science from George Washington University.  He holds certifications as Certified Procurement Transplant Coordinator (CPTC) and Certified Transplant Preservationist (CTP). 

Since 1974, Gift of Life has facilitated more than 53,500 organ transplants and more than 2 million tissue transplants.  Its annual donation rate, most recently 55 organ donors-per-million-population, ranks among the highest in the world. Gift of Life’s organ donation and transplantation network includes 15 transplant centers with 40 organ-specific programs and 128 acute care hospitals which serve 11.3 million people throughout Delaware, southern New Jersey, and the eastern half of Pennsylvania.

To learn more about Rick, be sure to watch our webinar where we held a live Q&A session with Rick and learned all about his career, life, and future plans for the organization. Click here to watch.