Audience:
Transplant administrators, clinical coordinators, data coordinators, physicians, and surgeons from heart and heart/lung programs, OPO executive directors
Implementation date:Tooltip Text
October 18, 2018: The new adult heart allocation policy is now in effect.
At-a-glance
Adult heart allocation policy has changed. As a result, for adult heart and heart-lung candidates, the three medical urgency statuses increased to six. Read the policy notice for complete details. These policy changes require you to submit new status justification forms in UNet for all of your active adult heart and heart-lung candidates from this point forward.
What you should know about the new status justification forms
If you failed to submit a form before Oct. 18 when the new system took effect, your candidate would have automatically been assigned to a status 6, or status 5 if they were listed for at least one other organ at your center. They will remain at that status until you submit a new justification form.
What you should know about risk stratification data (RSD)
The new policy requires us to collect RSD on all six status justification forms. This is brand new information that you have not been required to submit before. You must report this new information (40-50 fields) on every single status justification form (including extension forms), every single time you submit a form. You will be able to indicate that you haven’t performed a particular test. We will use this information to possibly develop a heart allocation score in the future.
Resources
- Toolkit (contains policy language, FAQ (updated on Oct. 10), information on heart devices and candidate status, evaluation plan, and more), new heart guidance documents
- Q&A for patients about how the policy change will affect them
- Patient information (PowerPoint presentation you can use to educate your patients about the policy change)
- Access all the available policy and system trainings in UNOS Connect from the course catalog; Heart category
- Preparing for adult heart allocation changes—recording available
- OPO training – PDF available
- UNet System training — recording available
- July 5, 2018 news item
Additional resources: Online help documentation covering UNet functionality is available. Access Secure Enterprise and then choose Waitlist. On the Help menu, click Waitlist 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 about how to submit the new status justification forms, contact UNOS Customer Service (UNet Help Desk) at 800-978-4334. Contact your UNOS regional administrator at 804-782-4800 if you have questions related to the new adult heart policy.
