The Donor is a Patient, Too

Live organ donation:  Lifesaving but risky

I have done a lot of thinking about organ donation.  Probably more than your average 32 year old.  I have known since I was very young that my kidneys do not work at full capacity.  As I age, their ability to function will continue to deteriorate.  At some point, I may be in the same position as Chad Arnold in the story linked; desperate for a transplant match, and grateful when it turns out to be one of my family members.

I could not imagine being him today.  If my husband, parent, or sibling were to perish from the act of extending my life, I would be devastated beyond words.

Because this issue is so personal to me, I think that it is important that I offer my two cents regarding why donors often feel abandoned by the system when things go wrong, and even sometimes when they go right.  I think that the problem lies in the fact that only the organ recipient is paying (or, more accurately, the organ recipient's insurance company).

Why would this matter?  I bet if you look at the billing codes for transplants, hospitals are paid about the same for living vs. nonliving donors.And, like everything else in today's world, hospitals are out to make money, or at least hoping to break even.  Follow-up care is expensive, and with no insurance company to bill for it, I bet hospitals neglect to give donors the same attention they give recipients.  To the surgeons, the donor is exactly like the cooler that is flown in when the organ being implanted is from a corpse; a vessel to carry the precious cargo with a CPT code, and nothing more.   

That is why the woman in the story who donated her kidney to her sister was ignored when she requested psychological help when the kidney she donated was rejected.  Cleveland Clinic probably looked up her file, realized she was the donor and they would have no one to bill for the care they provided, so didn't call back.