DENVER -- A kidney transplant brokered by a Web site was rescheduled for Wednesday after officials at Denver's Presbyterian/St. Luke's Medical Center tried to make sure the organ donation was ethical.

News of the original delay came on Monday while Bob Hickey of Edwards, Colo., was being prepped for an operation to receive a kidney from Robert Smitty of Chattanooga, Tenn. They connected on the Web site MatchingDonors.com and the transplant was to be the first performed with the help of the site.

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However, after the hospital approved the operation, the lead transplant surgeon, Dr. Igal Kam, returned from out of town and raised questions about how the match had been arranged, said Stephanie Lewis, a spokeswoman for P/SL. Officials decided to look into whether the Canton, Mass.-based Web company or Smitty profited from the donation, she said.

Hickey told 7NEWS that he reported at the hospital as scheduled Monday morning and was told of the postponement after being prepared for surgery. He said he was told the surgery was delayed because he didn't use the United Network for Organ Sharing, a non-profit group that works with organ transplant centers to facilitate transplants.

"I don't know what else to do. If I don't get a transplant within 24 hours from the donor that you (the hospital) approved then I'm going to consider what legal options are available to me against the hospital," he said on Monday.

Tuesday afternoon, the hospital said it would allow the transplant operation to proceed and issued a statement to explain why it delayed Monday's operation.

The operation will begin at 11 a.m. Wednesday, according to Paul Dooley, of MatchingDonors.com, however the hospital said it was still working out doctor's schedules and couldn't confirm that time.

Lewis said hospital officials hadn't heard any complaints about the Web site but simply wanted to verify that all ethical guidelines were being followed. She said the company agreed to provide information to answer their questions.

"Because it's so new we're not able to investigate things as quickly. So that's why all these things are coming to light so close to the transplant," she said.

The Web company, which provides a way for patients in need of organ donations to meet living donors, charges patients up to $295 a month to be listed. According to the Web site all of that amount is used to operate the site. Donations are also accepted to cover the costs of patients who want to be listed.

United Network for Organ Sharing, the national organization that matches organ donations to needy patients in the United States, has come out against the Web site, saying it takes advance of vulnerable transplant candidates and donors and subverts the equal allocation of organs.

Mark Yarborough, the director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, said he was concerned about the Web site's fairness and potential lack of oversight by medical professionals.

"The current system is certainly not perfect, but the transplant community has tried to assure that it's a fair process," Yarborough said.

He said not everyone can afford the Web site's fees or the thousands of dollars donors could come to expect for lost wages, hotel rooms and transportation.

"This kind of system potentially may make the overriding criteria (to receive an organ) the ability to pay," he said.

Yarborough said the Web site also could lead to people picking the recipient of their organs. Society benefits when there are procedures to ensure that everyone gets a fair and ethical chance for a transplant, he said.

A spokesman for the Web site said it's no different than some people being able to afford medical insurance and others not being able to, 7NEWS reported.

Hickey, 58, a doctor and former health care executive, met Smitty for the first time last week. Smitty, 32, a photographer and father of two, said he was hoping to find somebody who was "family-oriented" who needed a donation.

Hickey and his wife, a nurse in Vail, have four grown sons.

Hickey, who lost one kidney to disease only to have the second fail, said he got 4,500 hits from people interested in being a donor through the Web site.

There are more than 1,500 people in Colorado waiting for transplants, 7NEWS reported. When a person donates their organs and tissue at death, they can save as many as eight lives, the station said.