|
The Transplant Process When a hospital patient dies or is declared brain dead, an internal hospital process begins to determine the patient’s wishes and eligibility for donating organs. In compliance with state and federal laws, the hospital contacts its regional OPO to determine whether the patient is a candidate for donation and whether the patient has made a legal declaration to be an organ donor, either by consenting when renewing his or her driver’s license at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles or by joining the Ohio Donor Registry online at www.donatelifeohio.org. If the patient is a viable candidate for donation, the OPO finds a recipient and sends a transplant team to work with the hospital, discussing the process with family members and completing the transplant.
Physicians, nurses and the many other health care workers who care for patients face a difficult balance in comforting grieving family members and considering the lives that could be saved by the donation of organs. Health care workers dedicate themselves daily to saving lives, and part of this process is following through on the wishes of patients and their families related to organ donation.
The Scene in Ohio Someone in Ohio dies nearly every other day waiting for an organ, whether it be a kidney, heart, liver, lung, pancreas or small intestine. The hospital community is partnering with the state’s OPOs—Lifeline of Ohio Organ Procurement Agency, Life Connection of Ohio, LifeCenter Organ Donor Network and Lifebanc—to put in motion steps to make the entire organ donation process more efficient, thereby increasing the number of viable organs that successfully reach people in need.
Ohio currently converts individuals who are eligible to donate an organ into actual donations at a rate of about 60 percent. The initiative looks to reach a 75 percent conversion rate by the end of 2007. The initiative will also focus on increasing the number of organs per donor—striving to harvest up to 3.75 organs per donor, up from the current rate of 3.19. Achieving these two goals will result in more than 200 additional organs being available to Ohioans who need them each year.
In order to meet the initiative’s objectives, OHA, hospitals and Ohio’s OPOs are teaming up to improve internal procedures hospitals have established for organ donation. High-donor-potential hospitals will be asked to create or strengthen existing hospital organ donation councils, comprised of hospital trauma coordinators, trauma medical directors, hospital OPO liaisons, nurse executives, hospital social workers and others.
The councils will work to: Ø Improve the timeliness of contacts to the OPO for donation evaluation; Ø Improve the timeliness of requests by designated requestors to donor families; Ø Improve the referral rate, or the number of eligible donors who are referred for evaluation; and Ø Increase the number of organs per donor.
To help hospital councils be successful, OHA and the state’s OPOs will be sharing best practices with hospital councils via regular e-mail communications, a public Web site and through state and regional meetings.
Over the next several years, these short term goals add up to the Ohio Organ Donation Breakthrough Initiative’s broader mission to completely eliminate the waiting list for organs in Ohio. Right now in Ohio 2,500 people anxiously await a life-saving organ—but their wait may soon be over.
|
