Mission

The Ohio Solid Organ Transplantation Consortium is dedicated to improving the lives of individuals with solid organ failure who could benefit from an organ transplant.

The following goals have been identified to assist the OSOTC in achieving its mission.

Goals

1) Optimize utilization of the scarce resources currently available for transplant by carefully selecting patients listed for transplant.

2) Improve and ensure the quality of care provided by all of the transplant programs and services from member institutions.

3) Represent the needs of the patients and issues of importance to the transplant community to the Ohio policy makers.

4) Advance the medical technology of organ transplantation.

5) Expand patient access, address disparities and promote early referrals to end stage organ disease management programs in the state of Ohio.

Activities

In concert with each of the above goals, Consortium activities will be modified to better accommodate the current health care environment. The following is a brief summary of the activities being developed to accomplish the organization’s goals.

1) In this environment of evolving technology with expanding applications and a limited supply of organs, the Patient Selection Committees will be responsible for constructing statewide uniform selection criteria that will identify potential recipients based on their likelihood to benefit from a transplant.

2) The tradition of medical excellence in each of the OSOTC member institutions will be extended by bringing together nationally recognized experts with those from across the state to share knowledge and experience, as well as to provide mutual support through collaboration to strengthen the quality of the Ohio transplant programs. Analysis of the statewide data will demonstrate the success of these statewide programs, while the annual Program Review ensures that quality standards are maintained in each individual institution. Patient survival, however, does not reflect patients’ life satisfaction post-transplant. Extended life should have meaning, value and importance to the patients and those around them. An additional measure of outcome will be to assess patient quality of life post-transplant.

4) Through the participation of the Director of ODH as a member of the Board, the OSOTC will be able to communicate with state government and the legislature regarding state policies that could affect transplant patients. In addition, the OSOTC maintains a contract with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to ensure that the policy for selecting extra-renal transplant candidates is uniformly applied to all Ohioans, regardless of insurance type.

5) The advancement of medical technology is accelerated through timely data collection, analysis of the findings and dissemination of the results. By maintaining a statewide patient registry, the Consortium makes available to the physicians in Ohio critical data for use in patient care, modifying the statewide patient selection criteria or testing research hypotheses. With improvements in information technology this data will be more readily available to member programs. Informal communication facilitated by case conferences, as well as the more formal professional meetings will provide the basis for the transplant teams to converse frequently about state-of-the-art techniques and to take advantage of timely dissemination of medical knowledge.

6) While patient access to transplantation has improved since the beginning of the OSOTC, it continues to be an area of concern and requires further evaluation by the Ohio Department of Health, the Consortium and the Ohio transplant programs. Barriers to access may be geographic, financial or informational. Though geographic barriers to access have diminished for those living in the major metropolitan areas with established programs, the population living in the rural areas, remote to transplant centers, may not have acceptable access to services. Financial barriers to transplantation have been dramatically reduced with most insurance companies covering at least a portion of the cost of transplantation, but many citizens have neither health insurance nor medication coverage and therefore may not pursue necessary medical treatment. Information barriers also exist for patients as well as for community physicians who may not fully understand how to treat end stage organ diseases, when to refer patients to a transplant program or how to facilitate a smooth transfer. The value and extent of these barriers will be defined and explored to determine avenues for improving access to necessary health care.