Case Studies
Case studies showcase real-world applications of policies and innovations, offering insights into improving outcomes and efficiency. They enhance problem-solving skills, highlight best practices, and engage through storytelling for education and transparency.
Promoting Organ Utilization
Amy
McDonough
, LifeSource
The Challenge
Promoting organ utilization through development of a dedicated team, data analysis to identify opportunity and trends, after action reviews, transplant center collaboration, and development of the Art of Allocation training for our teams to elevate organ offers.
The Approach
Development of a team responsible for organ allocation with a focus on promoting organ utilization specifically kidney utilization through pro-active pre-recovery allocation processes and expedited post-recovery processes. Analysis of data to identify opportunity for improvement in high KDPI kidney allocation and trends in acceptance practices. Utilization of after action reviews on organs not placed for transplant and/or discarded to identify gaps in process and opportunities for improvement in process. Collaborating with local transplant centers to review organ offers to partner in increasing utilization of high KDPI kidneys in our community. Development of our Art of Allocation program to elevate organ offers and to control the narrative of organ offer evaluation.
The Results
Having a team dedicated to allocation, we have seen a significant decrease in the time we are spending in allocation, specifically post-op kidney allocation. In 2023 we saw a 4% increase in kidney utilization from 2022, in 2024 we a 4.5 % increase in kidney utilization from 2023. We also saw 255% increase in utilization of kidneys from donors with a KDPI > 50% and age > 60 in 2024 compared to 2023. And a 221% increase in kidney utilization of kidneys from donors with a KDPI of > 75%.
Insights & Lessons Learned
Through having a robust allocation process and a team dedicated to focused allocation to promote utilization results in increased utilization of hard to place organs and organs declined intra-operatively, in correlation with analysis of data, after action reviews, and transplant center collaboration, the result will be more organs being transplanted.