Collaborative for Donation Fairness

Keep Transplants Fair

A Collaboration for Donation Fairness

The Issue

Thousands of patients currently waiting for a liver transplant across the United States could wait longer or die waiting for the life-saving surgery if a new, proposed policy goes into effect. The proposed change redistricts the current 11-region system to an 8-region system, expanding the geographic areas in which a limited number of organs are allocated.

The “Redesigning Liver Distribution” proposal, if it passes, will have a drastic, negative impact on patients waiting for liver transplants across the United States. While the intent behind the proposal is to reduce wait times and wait list mortality rates, this change instead inadvertently creates a framework that:

produces lower quality organs as a result of longer transportation times between states
reduces long-term survival rates of liver transplantation
unfairly disadvantages minorities, lower socioeconomic candidates and those in rural areas
supports a system that artificially inflates MELD scores (which are used to determine a patient’s place on the transplant list), not actual lab values
drives up costs

More than 63 percent of states performing liver transplants have had transplant centers publicly oppose this proposal. Several polls of the transplant community have overwhelmingly vetoed the proposal’s measure for redistricting—but to no avail. If we don’t take action, donated livers will be sent from areas with high waiting list mortality to areas with low waiting list mortality.