Donate Close to Home
The National Kidney Registry (NKR) offers remote kidney donation, which allows someone to donate a kidney to a friend or family member in a distant city without requiring the donor to travel to the transplant center in the distant city.
Remote donation utilizes proven logistics systems pioneered in kidney swaps by the National Kidney Registry over the past decade to safely transport the kidney from the donor’s local hospital to the transplant center in the distant city.
Donors who donate through the NKR’s remote donation program are eligible for the support and protections offered by Donor Shield.
Below is a map of the centers that participate in the remote donation network.
Safe, Secure Transport and Delivery of Donated Kidneys
Every day in the United States, approximately 64 people receive a kidney transplant*, a life-saving operation that can mean the difference between years of dialysis with a compromised quality of life and living a full, healthy and active life free from machines. For a kidney transplant to be successful, it is crucial that the donated kidney is delivered to its destination safely and on schedule.
To ensure safe delivery, the National Kidney Registry uses advanced GPS technology and our Failsafe software to monitor every shipped kidney.
Failsafe monitors the kidney from the time of pickup until it is safely delivered at the recipient center. If a kidney does not make it onto a scheduled flight, or even if the flight does not take off on time, the Failsafe system will send out an alert to our team so that we can manage the issue and ensure a safe and timely delivery. After over 4,000 kidney transplants, the National Kidney Registry has never lost a single organ in transit.
*23,401 kidney transplants from live and deceased donors in 2019, according to UNOS.