SEKTC

A new NIH-funded grant, led by Health Services Research Center Associate Director Dr. Raymond Lynch, and Assistant Professor Dr. Katie Ross-Driscoll, is designed to answer a novel question in U.S. healthcare: which patients receive high quality medical care for organ donation?

In the U.S., organ procurement organizations (OPOs) are the federal contractors that work with all hospitals to identify, provide clinical care for, and procure organs from patients who are referred as potential organ donors. Yet, research from Dr. Lynch has shown that not all patients are provided timely, high-quality care for potential organ donation, due to high levels of unwarranted variation in clinical and community practice between OPOs. These disparities are especially pronounced at the largest integrated health system in the U.S.: the hospitals serving veterans, the Veterans Administration Medical Centers.

In published research, Dr. Lynch and collaborators demonstrated that patients at VA Medical Centers were 94.1% less likely to be organ donors than patients outside of VA Medical Centers. Shockingly, there were only 33 organ donors at VA Medical Centers between 2010-2019, and detailed analysis of VA electronic health records revealed more than 5,000 potential organ donor patients over the same time period.