Audience (Please share this notice with anyone in your organization who would benefit from it.)
- Transplant liver program directors, administrators, coordinators, compliance and quality officers, and clinical support staff
- Primary data coordinators
- Member representatives and alternate representatives
Implementation date
Feb. 25, 2021
At-a-glance statement
In preparation to receive expedited liver offers from deceased donors, transplant centers need to opt-in their candidates. This must be done on a candidate-by-candidate basis within the candidate’s liver registration in WaitlistSM. Transplant centers will need to designate an on call contact for their center within Contact Management in DonorNet®, this contact will receive the expedited liver organ offers.
What you need to do
- Transplant centers need to evaluate liver candidates individually and either opt-in or opt-out to receiving expedited offers. To opt-in, the candidate record must be marked as “yes” to accept an expedited liver recovered by any procurement team. Those that have not opted-in will not qualify to receive expedited liver offers. Your candidate will be neither set as opted-in nor opted-out for expedited offers, your candidates will be set to a new status, “waiting for response.” It is up to your program to either opt-in or opt-out for expedited offers on a candidate-by-candidate basis. The new “waiting for response” status is included in Custom Report options and is intended to help your center manage the candidates who are neither opted-in nor opted-out for expedited liver offers.
- Transplant centers need to specify who is on call to receive expedited organ offers, the same way contacts are set for local or import organ offers today. Transplant centers should consider designating the direct decision maker for organ offers as the new expedited offer contact, as these organ offers have a new evaluation time limit of 30 minutes.
Additional details
Phase 1 gives transplant centers one month to complete the tasks above, as Phase 2 implementation will give organ procurement organizations the tools they need to begin placing expedited livers. The tasks are necessary to complete in order to begin receiving expedited organ offers beginning on March 25, 2021, with Phase 2 implementation.
Education and resources
- Look for the following training materials in UNOS Connect, accessible to UNet users through the resources tab on the Secure Enterprise (UNet) homepage.
- SYS106-D: Opting in for Expedited Liver Offers – available now
- SYS164: Expedited Liver Placement for OPOs and TXCs – available March 8, 2021
- OPTN policy notice: Expedited Liver Placement
- Online help documentation covering UNet functionality is now available. Access Secure Enterprise and then choose either Waitlist or DonorNet. On the Help menu, click Online Help. You may search for a specific help topic or use the table of contents to assist with your search.
Questions?
If you have questions relating to implementation, contact UNOS Customer Service at [email protected], or call 800-978-4334 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET.
For policy-related questions, contact [email protected].
