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Practical Approaches to Mitigating Economic Barriers to Living Kidney Donation for Patients and Programs

  • Live Kidney Donation (K Lentine, Section Editor)
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Abstract

Purpose

Live donor kidney transplantation has superior outcomes to deceased donor transplantation; however, the number of living kidney donors continues to decrease in the USA. This is in part attributed to economic barriers.

Recent Findings

The significant economic barriers that exist include out-of-pocket expenses, loss or increased costs of insurability, and potential loss of employment. This paper describes the economic barriers to living kidney donation and national, local, and private sector initiatives needed to alleviate these barriers.

Summary

Ongoing attention to economic barriers is needed including improvement in reimbursement for travel, a process for coverage of lost wages and civil protection so that healthy willing donors may proceed with their desire to be a living kidney donor.

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Abbreviations

ACA:

Affordable Care Act

AFDT:

The American Foundation for Donation and Transplantation

CMS:

Center for Medicare and Medicaid Service

FN:

Financial neutrality

FMLA:

Family Medical Leave Act

KPD:

Kidney paired donation

LKD:

Live kidney donation

LDKT:

Live donor kidney transplantation

LODN:

Living Organ Donor Network

NLDAC:

National Living Donor Assistance Center

NOTA:

National Organ Transplant Act

OPTN:

Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network

ROI:

Return on investment

US:

United States

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Evidence and Policy, Zweig Family Center for Living Donation, Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute, The Mount Sinai Hospital, One Gustave L. Levy Place, Box 1104, New York, NY, 10029, USA

    Dianne LaPointe Rudow

  2. Department of Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA

    David Cohen

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  1. Dianne LaPointe Rudow
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Correspondence to Dianne LaPointe Rudow.

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Conflict of Interest

Dianne Rudow and David Cohen declare no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

Additional information

This article is part of the Topical Collection on Live Kidney Donation

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LaPointe Rudow, D., Cohen, D. Practical Approaches to Mitigating Economic Barriers to Living Kidney Donation for Patients and Programs. Curr Transpl Rep 4, 24–31 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40472-017-0135-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40472-017-0135-z

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