Not every donated and consented organ finds its way to a recipient. Statistics about the percentage of organs that are not being utilized from the total number of donated organs vary by jurisdiction. It is not uncommon for up to 50% of all donated organs never to be transplanted. So how do clinicians make sure that there are fewer organ discards?
This is a question for analytics: understanding why organs are unused or discarded in the first place is an important step in improving operational processes. The most common reasons for why organs are unused are that either an organ or a donor is unsuitable. Organ underutilization is also often a result of there being no suitable recipient for an available organ in terms of size or geographical proximity, or prolonged wait times which lead to organ deterioration and loss.
Improving donor organ utilization should be a high priority for transplant experts in all jurisdictions. Importantly, it should be given as much attention as increasing the availability of donor organs through encouraging higher donation rates.
To support the objective of improved organ utilization, there needs to be real-time data exploration into donated organs by type, number of consented organs, and the number of unused organs by reason, as well as other valuable data points collected and made available in a single system. In addition to collecting and using the largest possible data set, data standards and vocabulary management are top success factors for quality indicators into donated organ use.
Afflo analytics and insights feature a robust data model and reflect the full recipient lifecycle with all significant events in the donor and recipient journeys. Afflo’s data dashboards and interactive analytics can help ensure that every consented organ gets used and saves a life.