The ohio solid organ transplantation consortium: A 15-year experience

Abstract

The Ohio Solid Organ Transplantation Consortium (OSOTC) was established by the Ohio Department of Health in 1984 for the purpose of providing a means for regulating the practice of nonrenal organ transplantation in the State of Ohio. The OSOTC comprises all transplant centers in Ohio that provide these services including The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, the University of Cincinnati Hospitals/ Children's Hospital Medical Center, the Medical College of Ohio Hospitals, The Ohio State University Hospitals/Children's Hospital, and the University Hospitals of Cleveland. The mission of the OSOTC is to ensure equitable access to quality organ transplantation services in Ohio for those in need of a heart, lung, liver, pancreas, or small bowel transplant; to manage transplantation costs; and, in general, to support organ transplantation and organ donation in the state. These goals are achieved, in part, by mandatory pretransplant patient candidate reviews, adherence to strict patient listing criteria, submission of yearly transplant volume and outcomes data, and yearly program outcomes reviews. Since its inception, the OSOTC has performed almost 5000 transplant candidate reviews and more than 2300 patients in Ohio have received a nonrenal transplant. In this article, we describe these activities and review the data accumulated to date. In addition, the impact that the OSOTC has had on organ transplantation in Ohio will be discussed. It is the opinion of all of the member institutions and their respective transplant staffs that participation in the OSOTC has been beneficial to their patients and has fostered a collegial interaction among the transplant professionals in Ohio.