Implementation date:
- Dec. 3: Heart, lung, heart-lung, liver and intestine
At-a-glance
For heart, lung, heart-lung, liver and intestine programs, local donor acceptance criteria in Waitlist℠ have been updated in order to provide additional efficiency in organ allocation. Transplant programs should evaluate their current settings.
Summary of changes
With the transition away from donation service area (DSA) as a unit of allocation, a new framework has been developed to determine what type of offers would be screened using “local” acceptance criteria for a candidate. Because proximity to the donor hospital is a primary factor in the revised allocations, changes have been made to allow the location of the donor hospital in relation to the candidate to be considered when “local” acceptance criteria are applied. Read additional background information here.
For each organ type, the following new local acceptance criteria will be used to include candidates on the match run:
- Offers to candidates listed at transplant programs within the DSA and/or within 250 NM of the donor hospital:
- Heart
- Heart-lung
- Lung
- Offers to candidates listed at transplant programs within the DSA and/or within 150 NM of the donor hospital:
- Liver
- Offers to candidates listed at transplant programs within the DSA and/or within 500 NM of the donor hospital:
- Intestine
Similar changes will be implemented for kidney and pancreas allocation on Dec. 15, when DSA and region are removed from distribution of those organs.
The inclusion of DSA in this definition does not impact the order of the match run as that is established and organized by distance-based allocation definitions within OPTN policy.
What you need to do
Transplant programs for all organ types should evaluate their current “local” acceptance criteria settings for candidates in Waitlist and determine if updates are appropriate based on the revised definition of “local” donor acceptance criteria.
Additional resources
Find professional education on UNOS Connect:
- QLT103D Acceptance Criteria for Distance-based Allocation
In addition, Waitlist online help documentation has been updated so that transplant programs will have access to the information about how local acceptance criteria is used for offers for all organ types.
Questions?
If you have questions relating to implementation, contact UNOS Customer Service at [email protected], or call 1-800-978-4334 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. EST.
