Published On: December 5th, 2019Tags: , ,

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Our collaborator on the National Living Donor Assistance Center (NLDAC) project, Amit Mathur, MD, transplant surgeon at the Mayo Clinic of Arizona, has been selected to receive the prestigious 2020 Vanguard Award from the American Society of Transplant Surgeons (ASTS), in recognition of his recent publication in Clinical Transplantation, “Return on investment for financial assistance for living kidney donors in the United States.”  This work finds that financial support for organ donors’ out-of-pocket expenses produces dramatic federal savings through incremental living donor kidney transplants, by transitioning patients off dialysis.

Figure 2. from the paper.

Projected return on investment for living donor financial assistance relative to U.S. dialysis and transplant costs. ROI from the NLDAC program is calculated here based on federal spending for dialysis and kidney transplantation, with and without the NLDAC program costs. NLDAC costs are derived from the initial application accrual period and are held constant through the projections over time. In the first year, investment in NLDAC produces $48.2 million in savings, representing a 5.1-fold ROI overall. Notably, this ROI varied across states, from 3.9-fold to 6.6-fold. At 3 y, the ROI was 19-fold overall (state-state ROI IQR 14.0-23.0), producing $173.6 million in savings. At 5 y, NLDAC investment produces $256.4 in savings, representing a 28.2-fold return on investment, which ranged up to 34-fold at the 75th percentile of U.S. states.
This is an important finding in support of our long-term mission of making organ donation a net-zero endeavor for living donors.  Arbor Research co-authors on this manuscript include, Jiawei Xing, David Dickinson, and Bob Merion.
Citation
Mathur AK, Xing J, Dickinson DM, Warren PH, Gifford KA, Hong BA, Ojo AO, Merion RM. Return on investment for financial assistance for living kidney donors in the US. Clin Transplant. 2018;32(7):e13277.

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