Center Best Practices

Best Practices for Living Donor Intake

  1. Transplant center leadership must be committed to providing an excellent donor experience.
  2. Referred and recently evaluated donor candidates must be reviewed weekly by physician leaders.
  3. A one-day donor evaluation (e.g., CT scan, chest X-ray, etc.) must be utilized for all standard donors (no unusual health issues).
  4. Donor candidates must be contacted within two business days of the transplant center receiving the donor referral.
  5. Cancer screenings (e.g., colonoscopy, breast cancer, etc.) must not be required prior to starting the donor evaluation process.
  6. Donor candidates interested in the Voucher Program must be allowed to begin the donor evaluation process before their recipient is cleared for transplant.
  7. All donors and patients must be educated early in the process about all available donor support and protection programs.
  8. Center should work up multiple donors for a single patient to ensure the best possible opportunity to get a patient transplanted and reduce the wait time for donor evaluation and workup.
  9. When a patient receives multiple donor candidate registrations, the center must workup all viable donors and educate those donors on the Family Voucher Program to give those donors the option of backstopping the patient with a voucher if the patient receives a transplant from another donor.
  10. Donor candidates must be educated about, and offered the option of, remote donation when they are not in close proximity to the recipient’s transplant center.
  11. Donor candidates must be provided access to a Donor Mentor.
  12. Transplant center staff must meet quarterly to review donor feedback provided by the Donor Mentor program.
  13. Provide a full-time Living Donor Navigator. This addition to the team would allow prospective donors to be in contact with a Donor Navigator to guide them and answer questions along the way at the transplant center level. This key role would assist prospective donors with logistics when arriving for their appointments.
  14. Transfer long distance donors to an NKR center that is closer to their residence. NKR data has shown that a donor candidate within 50 miles from an NKR center donates at a higher percentage than donor candidates that are greater than 50 miles from an NKR center.