Second phase of national DCD procurement collaborative project ready to launch
Published on: Thursday, October 7, 2021
The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network has launched a second phase of a national initiative to help organ procurement organizations (OPOs) identify and share effective practices related to recovery of donation after circulatory death (DCD) organs. This is an expansion of the project’s first phase, which involved 26 of the nation’s 57 OPOs.
The number of DCD organs recovered annually has risen steadily over the past decade, with 2020 exceeding 2019’s record-setting numbers by more than 18 percent. All OPOs are again invited to participate in this continuation of the project in order to build on the recent performance improvement trends and save more lives.
The OPTN DCD Procurement Collaborative is currently in the enrollment period, which closes Oct. 15, 2021. Participating OPOs will work toward the project goal to increase DCD procurement by testing various interventions and processes within their organizations. Teams will have access to a private project platform with an improvement guide and resources, and are provided coaching to support them on their respective project work.
Participants will actively work on their projects from Nov. 1, 2021 – April 30, 2022. During that time they will attend monthly collaborative calls, attend monthly webinars and submit materials related to their plan-do-study-act approaches. An evaluation phase will follow and will offer an opportunity to analyze the outcome and process measure data to determine the effectiveness of the project.
The OPTN brings collaborative improvement projects to the community
The continuation of the DCD project is the latest of several collaborative improvement initiatives the OPTN has undertaken in the past few years. A pediatric liver discovery project launched in 2020 and involved more than a dozen transplant hospitals. Past collaborative improvement projects also include the Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network, which aimed to reduce risk-avoidance behaviors and increase transplantation of deceased donor kidneys with a kidney donor profile index greater than 50 percent.
Explore the Improvement section on the OPTN website to learn more about collaborative improvement, understand the impact the methodology has already had on transplantation, and to find out more about upcoming projects.
For more information about OPTN collaborative improvement, contact ci@unos.org.