DALLAS-The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) has developed a new liver allocation policy that broadens the geographic area over which livers will be distributed.
The plan also calls for developing new, more objective criteria for listing patients in status 2A, status 2B, and status 3 categories (see Transplant News Network, March 1, 2000).
The board of directors of UNOS approved the plan at a special meeting in Dallas on March 13 and intends to submit it to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this week. HHS has been trying for about two years to change the organ distribution system to make organs available across broader geographic regions and asked UNOS to develop a new distribution plan. The HHS rule is scheduled to go into effect on March 16, and although its implementation has been postponed several times over the past two years, another delay is not expected. Accordingly, UNOS was required to submit a new plan by the March 16 deadline. The next step is for HHS to decide whether to approve the new UNOS plan.
The two main changes in the UNOS plan "include expediting the examination of broader organ allocation areas and adding status 2a to the illness categories to be redefined….The plan also outlines a prospective verification of patients listings in order to ensure consistency within the national transplant system and calls for federal legislation to protect participants of prospective reviews similar to the statute covering peer review activities under Medicare," UNOS said in a statement.
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See UNOS's statement in the Newsroom at www.unos.org.
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