Identifying opportunities for improving the organ supply through race-stratified data

Organ procurement in the US has received attention from government officials and policymakers the last two years, culminating in CMS releasing an updated Final Rule related to organ donation this year. This regulatory change revises how organ procurement organizations (OPOs), the federal contractors tasked with managing deceased donation, are evaluated and certified/de-certified. We used 2019 data and the CMS methodology to calculate race-stratified donation data among racial/ethnic minorities across the 57 OPOs. We found that the variability in donation rates across the 57 OPOs are greater among minority populations than non-Hispanic white potential donors. Among Tier 3 OPOs, there are: a) some with low donation rates across all racial/ethnic groups; b) some with low donation rates among only certain groups, and c) some where donation rates are lowest among non-Hispanic white patients. Among low-performing OPOs, these race/ethnicity-stratified data show that under-performance in certain areas is not due to the population demographics, and identifies areas for targeted interventions to increase donation and avoid decertification