Geographic Accessibility of Deceased Organ Donor Care Units

Where should deceased organ donor care units (DCUs) be located to maximize hospital access and minimize transport time and distance from referring hospitals?In this cohort study of 53 093 organ donors with brain death in the continental US, 61.9% were from hospitals within a 180-minute drive of an operating DCU. Opening 38 additional hospital-based DCUs (while respecting service boundaries) was estimated to cover 92.7% of donors, whereas 22 additional DCUs (while ignoring boundaries) was estimated to cover 96.5%.These findings uncovered an unmet need to improve donor hospital access to centralized donor management in DCUs and suggest that sharing of the existing health care infrastructure may be leveraged to address this gap.

Corresponding Author: Peter P. Reese, MD, PhD, Vanderbilt Center for Transplant Science, Vanderbilt University, 2525 West End Ave, Room 713, Nashville, TN 37203 (peter.reese@vumc.org).

Link to the article in your story

We encourage you to link out to this article in your story using the link below. It includes an access token that will give free access to the article for your readers up to one year after publication. (The link will be live after the article publishes and embargo is lifted.)

Please see the article for additional information, including full author list, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

Need more information? Contact us.