Medi-Cal, the California medicaid program, is changing its policy and soon will pay for adult-to-adult living donor liver transplants, according to Gail Margolis, deputy director for medical care of the state Department of Health Services.

Medi-Cal currently covers live donor liver transplants from adults to children who are age 15 and under and weigh less than 80 pounds, but until now has refused to pay for adult-to-adult transplants -- which require more of the donor's liver -- because the procedure was regarded as "too dangerous," Margolis said.

But at a special meeting of Medi-Cal's Medical Advisory Committee in December, doctors and medical directors decided that "the time had come where it was much safer . . . and we would change the policy," Margolis said.

The policy change is expected to actually go into effect in several months, after criteria required of the transplant center, the donor and the patient are worked out, including the minimum number of live donor liver transplants that a hospital and its surgeons must have successfully done in order to qualify.