Audience
- Heart Primary Program Administrators, Primary Data Coordinators, Primary Physicians, Primary Surgeons
- Heart TX Program Administrators/Managers, TX Program Directors, TX Program Medical Directors, Clinical Training Coordinators/Managers, TX Program – Clinical Coordinators, Support Staff-Clinical, Data Coordinators, Regulatory Affairs Coordinators/Managers, Compliance Officers, Quality Directors/Managers, Quality Coordinators, TX Program Surgical Directors, TX Surgeons
- The Board of Directors of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network
- Members of the Heart Transplantation Committee
Implementation date
June 15, 2021
At-a-glance
The National Heart Review Board (NHRB) was created by members of the Heart and Pediatric Committees to improve quality and consistency in evaluation of exceptions for heart candidates listed before their 18th birthday. The goal of the NHRB is to use the specialized pediatric expertise of physicians and surgeons across the country to refine the evaluation of Status 1A and Status 1B exception requests.
For the transplant hospital, system changes include:
- New Manage Heart Forms section accessible from the candidate record
- Justification forms are updated with a new “look” and “feel”
- Candidates who meet criteria will be automatically approved for the requested status
- For exception requests, members will be able to view the outcome of the vote once the NHRB completes its review
- Members will appeal and extend status from within Manage Heart Forms for all status 1A and 1B candidates
- The new Pediatric Heart Exception – Extension Management report will assist programs with managing their extensions and appeals
For review board participants, system changes include:
- Ability to manage dates they are unavailable so that the program’s alternate can handle the cases when the primary representative is out of the office
- Links to view assigned cases, vote on cases, and view their resolved cases are available from within the Review Board section of Waitlist
What you need to do
- Transplant hospitals should take the offered training to build familiarity with the system changes. They will continue to submit justification forms for their pediatric candidates using the new Manage Heart Forms section of the candidate record.
- Transplant hospitals are also strongly encouraged to use the Pediatric Heart Exception – Extension Management report to track the actions that are due on the open cases for their candidates.
- Review board participants should watch their email inbox for new cases and address those cases within 3 days.
Additional resources
A training module entitled “PED103 – National Heart Review Board (NHRB) for Pediatrics” is available for both transplant hospital personnel and participating review board members in UNOS Connect, your connection to UNOS’ professional education.
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. EDT.
For policy-related questions, contact [email protected].
If you have questions about the NHRB, or would like to participate on the review board, reach out to [email protected].
