Tampa General, combining tech and high-touch care, leads US in organ transplants

Technology is bringing the normally high costs of transplants down, which has allowed TGH's large transplant team to do more of them.

By Laura Lyon
| 5:00 a.m. June 5, 2025
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Tampa General Hospital was ranked number one in the country for transplants by volume after performing a record-breaking 889 transplants led by Dr. Kiran Dhanireddy, vice president and chief of the TGH Transplant Institute.

Tampa Bay-Lakeland

In 2022, Tampa General Hospital, already a top-five hospital in size with 1,040 beds and the 17th largest in the nation, set its sights on what Dr. Kiran Dhanireddy, vice president and chief of the TGH Transplant Institute, called two "big, hairy, audacious" goals: to be the largest transplant center in the country and to perform 1,000 transplants in one year.

A little more than two years in, the hospital has met one of the two benchmarks, becoming the largest transplant center nationwide, with 889 transplants in 2024: 500 kidneys, 279 livers, 51 hearts, 42 lungs, 14 pancreas and 3 heart-lungs combined. TGH moved up to No. 1 on the national transplant list from No. 4 in 2023, surpassing Mayo Clinic Hospital Arizona, University of California San Francisco Medical Center and The Cleveland Clinic Foundation. The data comes from the Organ Procurement & Transplantation Network.