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SERVICE SPOTLIGHT
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Cost Report Review Prior to Filing
Guidry & East reviews Medicare Organ Acquisition Cost Reports prior to filing with the Fiscal Intermediary. This can prevent embarrassing and unexpected audit adjustments, which can materially affect net income and/or cash flow projections. We believe this is an extremely valuable service to have a company who works only in the field of transplant perform such a highly specialized service, given the numerous federal regulatory agencies and their nebulous guidelines impacting the cost report.
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| Guidry & East brings you Transplant Insider, a quarterly publication comprised of resources and news vital to developing your transplant business solutions for growing transplant programs, improving transplant operations, and the transplant financial product line.
We look forward to being your provider of the latest policies and procedures in quality patient care.
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Currently Accepting Nominations for Heckenkemper Transplant Leadership Award
The UNOS Transplant Administrators Committee is seeking nominations for the
Annual Heckenkemper Leader in Transplant Administration Award to be presented at the UNOS Transplant Management Forum in April 2018. Please click on the link below to read about this award, review nominee criteria, and submit your nomination.
Deadline for nominee submissions is November 30, 2017.
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Two-year Analysis Shows Effects of Kidney Allocation System
An
analysis of data
two years since implementation of the kidney allocation system (KAS) shows a number of longer-term patterns, with success in a number of key system goals.
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Public Comment is Open
July 31 - October 2, 2017
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The OPTN policy development process incorporates feedback on policy and bylaws proposals, before the proposals go to the OPTN board of directors for approval. Public comment is an essential part of the policy development process.
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T Cell Subsets Predicting Belatacept-Resistant Rejection: Finding the Root Where the Trouble Starts
A nonhuman primate study from Mathews et al (page 2285) and a clinical study from Cortes-Cerisuelo et al (page 2350) identify pretransplant T cell subsets predicting the risk of rejection with belatacept therapy, defining biomarkers that may eventually allow personalization of immunosuppression based on pretransplant immune status and thus lead to increased biomarker-driven belatacept use.
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Retransplantation After a Failed Donation After Circulatory Determination of Death Liver Transplant: MELD Exception Priority and Second Chances
A standardized exception score that allows access for retransplantation in the setting of graft failure due to ischemic cholangiopathy with donation after circulatory determination of death (DCDD) liver transplantation will encourage greater utilization and innovation in DCDD liver transplantation. See Croome et al's article on
page 2420
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Odds for Receiving a Kidney Transplant Now Equal for Black, White and Hispanic Candidates
Recent improvements in national kidney transplant policy have evened the rates at which African-American, Hispanic and Caucasian transplant candidates receive kidneys from deceased donors, according to data from United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS). UNOS serves as the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) under federal contract.
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Hospital Campaign Breaks Participation Record
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has released the results of the 2017 Workplace Partnership for Life Hospital Organ Donation Campaign. More than 1,000 hospitals and transplant centers, including 296 small and rural hospitals, earned platinum, gold, silver or bronze recognition for their outstanding efforts to promote donation awareness and donor registration between October 2016 and April 2017. The Campaign, which unites hospitals, healthcare associations, organ procurement organizations, and Donate Life America affiliates to work together to increase the number of people who register as organ, eye and tissue donors, realized a 13 percent increase in the number of hospitals that participated. Together, the Campaign partners added 26,975 donor registrations to state registries over a 7-month period.
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Blood type B candidates Transplanted Faster With Non-A1/non-A1B Kidneys
Through the kidney allocation system (KAS) implemented in 2014, kidney transplant programs nationwide can list eligible candidates with blood type B to receive deceased donor kidneys with compatible subtypes of either A or AB blood types (known either as non-A1/non-A1B or A2/A2B). Prior to KAS, this form of matching had been done on a voluntary basis through a policy variance.
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Kidney Equity in Access Report Updated
The Equity in Access Report for deceased donor kidney transplants has been updated as of August 2017. Figure 1 suggests that waiting list candidates continue to have more equitable access to deceased donor kidney transplants since implementation of the kidney allocation system (KAS) in late 2014. Disparities in access remain, however, and are largely attributable to differences in the donor service area where the candidate is listed, as well as the candidate's blood type and calculated panel reactive antibody (CPRA) profile.
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The Opioid Epidemic Weaves Its Way Through the Transplant Community
This month's installment of "The AJT
Report" reviews how the opioid addiction epidemic impacts organ donors, recipients and transplant physicians. We also take a look at the controversies surrounding marijuana use in transplant recipient candidates.
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The Unbearable Lightness of Breathing
Accumulation of chitin, an insoluble biopolymer widely present in mold and house dust, in the lungs of mice can cause airway inflammation and progressive pulmonary fibrosis.
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New Intestine Program Applications and Bylaws
The OPTN/UNOS Board of Directors approved bylaws in June 2015 defining a designated intestine transplant program and establishing minimum qualifications for primary intestine transplant surgeons and physicians. The implementation of these bylaws was delayed to allow for the development of new application forms and the approval of those forms by Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The OMB has recently approved the new intestine transplant program applications.
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Submitting LAS Exception Requests for Candidates Diagnosed with PH
Audience: Physicians, surgeons, coordinators, UNet
SM Site Administrators, program directors, and data coordinators at lung and heart/lung transplant programs.
Guideline: Lung transplant candidates diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension (PH) and who meet the following criteria may qualify for an increase in their Lung Allocation Score (LAS):
- Patient is deteriorating on optimal therapy, and
- Patient has a right atrial pressure greater than 15 mm Hg or a cardiac index less than 1.8 L/min/m2.
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We've Updated the HLA Equivalency Tables and Added DQA1 Equivalences
At a glance:
The system changes related to updating the HLA equivalency tables and adding DQA1 equivalences are now in effect. Although we originally planned to implement this system change on August 29, we changed that date to September 12 because of a patient safety-related concern brought forward by the transplant community during beta testing.
Consequently, as of today, we have implemented all of the changes detailed in the
initial system notice, except for the allele-level typing options for DR51, DR52 and DR53.
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CMS Reveals New Medicare Card Design
Removing Social Security numbers strengthens fraud protections for about 58 million Americans
Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) gave the public its first look at the
newly designed Medicare card. The new Medicare card contains a unique, randomly-assigned number that replaces the current Social Security-based number.
CMS will begin mailing the new cards to people with Medicare benefits in April 2018 to meet the statutory deadline for replacing all existing Medicare cards by April 2019. In addition to today's announcement, people with Medicare will also be able to see the design of the new Medicare card in the 2018 Medicare & You Handbook. The handbooks are being mailed and will arrive throughout September.
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New booklet Advises Transplant Candidates Seeking a Living Donor
A new
booklet, developed by the OPTN/UNOS Living Donor Transplantation Committee, advises transplant candidates on seeking a potential living donor. The booklet outlines the living donation process and suggests strategies and resources for transplant candidates or family members to consider.
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Final Modeling Data Available for Liver Proposal
The Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) has released the final installment of liver simulation modeling results relating to the current public comment proposal to enhance liver distribution. The proposed policy changes are intended to decrease geographic variation in liver transplant access without significantly affecting travel distance or percentage of organ offers flown.
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Change to MPSC Outcomes Review Process Meant to Encourage Kidney Utilization, Transplants
Many transplant professionals say a key challenge to increasing organ utilization is to establish more clinically relevant measures of their program's outcomes. While accepting donors or candidates with somewhat greater risk factors may not in fact trigger additional program review based on statistical thresholds, some clinicians remain concerned about their potential impact. Studies suggest that hundreds of potentially transplantable kidneys are discarded each year, or never even recovered for transplant, partially due to such concerns.
To address these issues and encourage greater use of transplantable organs, various initiatives are underway to encourage clinicians to accept additional risk while providing a more balanced approach to outcome monitoring and review.
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Career Moves
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Congratulations!
Michelle Lorenz, RN, BSN, CCTC
Administrative Director for Transplant Services
Baptist Memorial Hospital
Memphis, TN
Melissa Korb, RN, BSN, MBA, CPTC
Transplant Administrator at Gulf Coast Medical Center,
a member of Lee Health
Fort Myers, Florida
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If you would like to be featured in the upcoming Transplant Insider,
please send updated career moves to
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STOP BY!
We will be in Charlotte, NC for
the
Transplant Quality
Institute Conference
October 11-13.
Registration & Information here.
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It was great to see you!
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1.
Alexander Aussi, COO- Guidry & East & Dr. Francisco Cigarroa, UT- Chancelor
2. Alexander with Michelle Foley, COO-OTTR
3. Alexander Aussi, COO- Guidry & East & Chris Laycock, Director-Organ Recovery Systems
4. Alexander Aussi, COO- Guidry & East & Teresa Shafer, Past President- TTS
5. Alexander Aussi, COO- Guidry & East & Jim Guidry, CEO-Guidry & East
2017 Texas Transplant Society Annual Meeting
The over-arching theme of the conference was "Priming the Well - Ways to Increase the Donor Supply and Transplant more of our Patients"
in Galveston, Texas at the beautiful Moody Gardens Hotel.
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We welcome input from our readers on
future topics.
Send us your ideas for discussions, upcoming events,
and question and answer topics to
We look forward to hearing from you.
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