Letter Sent to Living Donor Program Administrators
For the third year in a row, the OPTN/UNOS President and the Chair of the OPTN/UNOS Living Donor Committee have sent a letter to all living donor programs containing detailed information on the status of their living donor follow up. The letter, sent the first weekend in March to the program administrators, compares center-specific data of that program’s one year living donor follow-up to the national median.
Current policy requires that transplant centers submit follow-up forms on all living donors after transplant at six months, one year and two years. Those requirements don’t specifically state, however, that the forms must be filled out completely—and unfortunately—often they’re not. So although most centers have gotten better about submitting the actual forms, the information within is not always complete or useful.
We encourage members of living donor transplant teams to contact your program administrator to view your living donor follow-up center specific data.
New Resource Available
A resource recently developed by the Living Donor Committee is now available on the OPTN website. Based on a review of high performing living donor programs, it outlines best practices for collecting and submitting high quality data for living donor follow-up. Programs are encouraged to use this voluntary resource as a jump start to developing your own individual strategies. Watch for an article about the resource in the upcoming March/April issue of the UNOS Update Magazine.
Special Thanks
The Living Donor Committee is grateful to the following programs for their assistance in developing the living donor follow-up resource.
Living donor liver programs: Lahey Clinic Medical Center, Burlington, MA (Denise Morin, RN, MSN) University of Virginia Health Sciences Center, Charlottesville, VA (Anita Sites, RN, BSN, CCTC)
Living donor kidney programs :The Christ Hospital, Cincinnati, OH (Barbara Groene, RN, BSN) Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL (Sharon White, RN, BSN, CCTC) North Austin Medical Center, Austin, TX (James Pittman, RN, BSN) Ohio State University Medical Center, Columbus, OH (Laura Murdock, MHA, Robin Petersen-Webster, LPN, CCTC) Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, Denver, CO (Kelli Jantz, RN, BSN, Marita Dougherty, MSW) University of North Carolina Hospitals, Chapel Hill, NC (Lauren Kearns, MSN, RN-BC, Ann Litts, RN, BSN, CCTC, Deborah Ericks
