Audience: (Please share this notice with anyone in your organization who would benefit from it.)
- All members involved in any Kidney Paired Donation (KPD) program, including internal KPD programs
Implementation date
Feb. 1, 2023
At-a-glance
In December 2022, the OPTN Board of Directors approved a series of Kidney Paired Donation policy updates. The changes are intended to improve the efficiency of the OPTN Kidney Paired Donation Pilot Program (KPDPP), improve clarity around the living donation process and update informed consent for participants in all KPD programs.
Changes impacting all KPD Programs:
- Updates to informed consent policies to improve clarity, donor autonomy, and align requirements with the OPTN Living Donor Policy.
Changes impacting the OPTN KPDPP:
- Shortened organ offer evaluation deadlines
- New deadlines for organ recovery and transplantation
- Adjustments to policy aimed at preventing administrative issues from stopping KPD exchanges
The modified and new deadlines are listed below. Information on other adjustments to policy can be found in the policy notice.
Additional details
The following OPTN KPDPP match offer and exchange deadlines have been reduced to 3 business days:
- Deadline for hospitals involved in an exchange to agree in writing to the following:
- Contents required in the crossmatch kit
- Instructions for the donor
- Address to send completed blood samples
- Deadline for the matched donor’s hospital to report to the OPTN the agreed upon date of the crossmatch after receiving the match offer
- Deadline for the matched donor’s hospital to make the following records accessible to the matched candidate’s hospital:
- Any serologic and nucleic acid testing results that have not already been shared
- Whether the matched donor has any risk criteria for acute HIV, HBV or HCV infection
- Additional records requested by the matched candidate’s transplant hospital
The following OPTN KPDPP match offer deadlines have been reduced to 10 business days:
- Deadline for the matched candidate’s hospital to report the results of the crossmatch to the OPTN
- Deadline for the matched candidate’s hospital to confirm acceptance or report a refusal of the match offer to the OPTN
The following new deadlines have been added to the OPTN KPDPP program:
- Hospitals involved in an exchange must agree upon a date and time for the recovery of the matched kidney(s) within 15 business days of receiving the match offer
- Hospitals involved in an exchange must schedule both the recovery of the kidney from one of the matched donors in the exchange and the subsequent transplant of their matched candidate within 60 days of receiving the match offer
Education and resources
Existing KPDPP courses in UNOS Connect will be updated to reflect the policy changes.
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].
The Organ Center is available 24 hours a day at 800-292-9537.
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