“It is common practice for Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) to report, collect and track issues and problems occurring during the organ donation process. We labeled issues with our policies and procedures as occurrences. Hospital deviations from requirements were defined as variances. At a large OPO in 2013 there were 74 occurrences and 232 variances reported. Data were analyzed retrospectively at the beginning of 2014 as part of our performance improvement (PI) plan. As a result, each issue was mapped to an area of the organizations process flow. After analyzing 2013 variances it was found that the majority of problems are due to late referrals from hospitals to the OPO (N=93 | 40.1%) and physician or hospital staff unauthorized pre-approaches and pre-mentions of organ donation without of OPO staff presence (N= 71 | 30.6%). It was observed that the major sources of occurrences were 1) intra-operative (N=28| 38.4%) followed by 2) processes between consent to allocation(N=15 | 20.5%) and 3) allocation to operation (N=14 |19.2%). Occurrences during operations include, for example, surgical damage caused by the transplant team to recovered organs. This analysis led us to pinpoint issues with surgical recoveries and sparked concentration of the OPOs medical director on collaboration with the recovery surgeons of the transplant centers. Rates of occurrences and variances will be continued to be tracked to determine the outcomes of all PI interventions.”

« Back to 2015 American Transplant Congress