Implementation date
Sept. 14, 2023
At-a-glance
Allocation of all Vascularized Composite Allograft (VCA) organs will move to UNet on Sept. 14. Please review the information in this notice to ensure that your program is prepared for the transition.
Changes to UNet on Sept. 14:
Security Administration will have permissions categorized by the 8 VCA organ programs. When the “Genitourinary organs” program splits into the three separate “External male genitalia”, “Uterus”, and “Other genitourinary organ” programs, Security Administration will be updated.
Waitlist will include candidate management for each of the 10 VCA organs.
- Any patients still on the “VCA Candidate List” at time of implementation will be added to Waitlist by UNOS staff. After implementation is complete on Sept. 14, transplant hospitals will be responsible for reviewing these registrations to ensure all candidate registration information is accurate.
- Listing Defaults will be utilized for indicating program-specific contact information, short-term program inactivity and defaulted donor acceptance criteria.
DonorNet® will include the 10 VCA organs on match initiation, match results, organ offers, test donors, contact management, and select reports. For donors added after implementation, there will be two new VCA related sections:
- On the donor record’s Organ Data tab, a new “VCA organs” section will be added to collect information and/or comments for any of the VCA organs.
- On the Donor organ disposition (feedback), a new “Disposition of donor VCA organs” section will be added.
TIEDI® will include recipient transplant data collection for each of the 10 VCA organs. As a modification to the VCA graft failure definition, the VCA – uterus TRR and TRF will include a “Planned removal” graft status option and “Removal date” field. For now, members will continue to utilize the external “VCA Living Donor Feedback” form to register VCA living donors in TIEDI.
What you need to do
Transplant hospitals:
Transplant programs will need to designate an on-call contact for their center within Contact Management in DonorNet, this contact will receive the VCA organ offers.
Site security administrators should take the following steps to prepare their VCA transplant program for UNet:
- Identify and add VCA personnel to UNet: Check UNet Security Administration to ensure that all individuals who will need to access to VCA once it is live in UNet. Please do this by Aug. 28.
- Create security groups for VCA personnel: Toggle to your VCA program(s) under ‘Groups’ in Security Administration to create security groups. At this time, you may add permissions for Waitlist, DonorNet, Patient Safety, and Member Community. Please note, TIEDI permissions are not yet available for VCA programs. Users will need to be added to TIEDI on or after Sept. 14.
- Add users to group based on permission needs: Users should be added to security groups so they can access UNet beginning Sept. 14. It is strongly recommended that these individuals take the UNet user training in UNOS Connect prior to using the system.
Other VCA personnel at transplant programs:
- Review the UNet and VCA education listed below to prepare for the transition.
OPOs/histocompatibility labs:
- No permission changes are being made to Security Administration that would impact OPO or histocompatibility lab users.
- Review the UNet and VCA education listed below to prepare for the transition.
Education and resources
To prepare for the transition, review courses in UNet University. UNet University features six e-learning modules that are designed to familiarize you to the UNet system at an introductory level. Log into UNOS Connect (the OPTN’s learning management system) and search for:
- UNet University Playlist
A new educational course specific to VCA will be available in UNOS Connect on Aug. 17, 2023. Log into UNOS Connect and search for:
- VCA 102: VCA Allocation in UNet
Users will have an opportunity to access a non-production system ahead of the release. More information will come in a future notice.
Help documentation will also be updated in UNet along with this release.
