The motive for the alleged data manipulation is unknown.
The Chronicle notes that Memorial Hermann has seen increasing numbers of liver transplant candidates die or become too sick for a transplant while on the waitlist. According to federal data, in 2021, only four patients died or got too sick for a transplant while on the hospital’s liver transplant waiting list. In 2022, the number increased to 11, and in 2023, it was 14. So far this year, there are five patients who have died or gotten too sick while waiting.
The NY Times article makes it much clearer; the example they gave was that this surgeon would enter a patient with the age of a toddler, and then enter the weight of the toddler as 300 lbs. In other words, he went out of his way to make the data on a particular patient so self-conflicting it would zero out that patient’s place on the rankings for a new liver.
Whatever the actual scoring system or algorithm, whatever this surgeon was doing broke it entirely for any patient he chose, and he did it often enough to get both his liver and his kidney transplant programs shuttered indefinitely.
So it was absolutely certain it was not fat-fingering or a series of oversights in entering patient data, it was not faulty software, it was not a one-off, and this deliberate practice had the specific, individually directed effect of breaking the transplant ranking entirely for that particular patient and none of the rest.
There aren’t a lot of “could-have-beens” left after you eliminate all that. I would imagine they are also looking at the real data of the patients who were sent to the bottom of the rankings by this surgeon just to see what their scores would have been, had the data been entered correctly. If the data itself isn’t enough of a smoking gun, that will be.