Donor Network of Arizona (DNA)

Organ recovery and placement services: Donor Network of Arizona (dna) focuses on its mission to save and heal lives by maximizing the availability of high-quality organs and tissues for transplantation. Only with the powerful gifts given by donors to recipients and the dna partnerships with Donor hospitals and transplant centers can this mission be accomplished. In 2023, 353 donors gave a record-setting number of organs, which resulted in the recovery of 1,140 organs of which 935 were transplanted. As dna expands its efforts to pursue every possible opportunity to save lives, the organization identified another 208 potential organ donors who unfortunately could not donate.dna also facilitated the recovery of nearly 300 organs for research, which is vital to increasing positive health outcomes. The generosity of donors in Arizona is the cause and the catalyst for such successful donations of organs and tissues to give healing and hope to others. That generosity shows up in the increased rate of transplantation.in 2023, 491 people received transplantable kidneys, a 7% increase from the previous year. 6 people received kidneys en bloc, 112 people received transplantable hearts (a 20% increase over 2022), 226 people received transplantable livers (a 20% increase), 6 people received transplantable liver segments, 28 people received transplantable pancreata, 6 people received transplantable lungs, and 57 people received transplantable lungs en bloc. In addition, dna facilitated the importation of 444 transplantable organs from other geographical areas. Import facilitation services were discontinued on september 1, 2023, to allow dna to focus our resources on our primary mission as the organ procurement organization in Arizona to better serve the statewide Donor population.dna strives to make every effort to increase lives saved and honor the Donor's gifts. In 2023, we implemented a program to partner and educate transplant centers in Arizona, the southwest region, and in the u.s. that organs suitable for transplant are being declined. Beginning in 2023, these efforts succeeded in reaching key stakeholders in the transplant community. In addition, dna created a dedicated Donor care center, in 2023, for Donor patients at banner - university medical center phoenix, which launched in early 2024. The Donor care center allows better care for Arizona donors and increases donation outcomes.we continue to see amazing results in 2024, but there is still much work to do.

Donor hospital program services and community services: Donor program development: Donor program development at Donor Network of Arizona is composed of two departments, hospital Donor program development and business intelligence. Hospital Donor program development: hospital Donor program development is responsible for maximizing the total number of donors recovered for transplant in Arizona through the implementation of individualized Donor programs based on comprehensive hospital assessment, analysis of the Donor potential, the implementation of ongoing quality process improvement, and initiation and fostering of effective relationships within the healthcare community.donor Network of Arizona (dna) continues to utilize the best practices as defined by the u.s. department of health and human services' (hrsa) breakthrough collaboratives for organ donation and transplantation. This includes active participation in regional and national improvement efforts. These efforts continue to help us maximize conversion rates, donors and the number of organs transplanted per Donor in Arizona. In addition to ongoing education in Arizona hospitals and healthcare organizations, dna holds an all-hospital symposium every other year. Dna has robust hospital partner participation in national donate life month and many of the hospitals in Arizona receive recognition from hrsa.some key highlights for 2023 include:1) Donor program development (dpd) coordinators continue to be onsite overseing every donation after circulatory death (dcd) opportunity. This allows us to support the hospital and provide education in real-time.2) based on strong dpd hospital relations and education throughout metropolitan phoenix, implemented Donor care center and process for transfer of organ donors to the Donor care center. Establishing a Donor care center in the state of Arizona benefits both Donor hospitals and transplant centers with better allocation of many resources. These include intensive care rooms and staffing as well as operating room availability.3) continued support of the expanded clinical triggers in response to medical record review findings and missed Donor trends. Roll out included research, internal and external pilot program, re-education of hospital staff, and re-engineering how we follow potential organ donors.4) Donor program development focused resources to strengthen relationships with hospital administrators to both improve the hospital's donation programs and introduce organ donation process changes in the state that will enable us to recover and transplant more organs.5) formally trained hospital Donor program staff to respond to potential organ referrals in response to increased referral volume due to new clinical triggers. This helped expand dna's service to Arizona hospitals.6) continued in-person education with over 200 education events, including virtual classes and quarterly donation and transplantation leadership webinars. Dna also continued to provide continuing education credits through the continuing nursing education group (cneg) for the advanced Donor nurse class. 7) launched annual town hall to engage and inform Donor hospital, transplant center and community stakeholders in our mission.business intelligence: the business intelligence department is responsible for identifying, formulating, implementing, and evaluating high-quality, data driven decision capabilities and process improvement initiatives in collaboration with other leaders and in alignment with Donor Network of Arizona's strategic objectives. This department includes data systems and analytics and data intelligence teams which collect and present data needed for operational requirements and to provide flexible data solutions to meet organizational needs. This department is also responsible for overseeing the death record review and hospital death report audit processes, as well as overseeing access to electronic medical record (emr) systems in Arizona hospitals for Donor Network of Arizona staff.2023 highlights include the following:1) rolled out a new version of the clear dashboard, which is a central list of enterprise activity and results. This organization-wide tool aims to allow dna staff in every corner of the organization to see and interact (filter, sort, expand) with the goals, monitors, trends, and outcomes across the organization. The primary considerations of this tool are clarity, transparency, and useability.2) formed a new multi-disciplinary electronic Donor record utilization framework to serve all of dna as a collective of content experts, strategically minded process owners, and functional decision-makers focused on supporting all of dna to utilize the electronic Donor record system for organizational objectives. The primary considerations of the endeavor is collaboration, fiscal responsibility, and functional prioritization. Developed and implemented the multi-departmental topboard. The topboard is a significant improvement in the way that our clinical operations follow tissue donation referrals. It allows for data at the fingertips of all the staff involved in the hospital or medical examiner referral or tissue Donor as opposed to being spread throughout the emr. It allows decision makers to pay attention to cases as they are triaged toward family conversations, recovery and transportation.3) continued refinement of the automated death record review process on over 85% of hospital deaths. The hospital death record and icd10 code assessment system is estimated to save approximately 70% of the time of the previous manual process, while removing many opportunities for user error. This process's refinement aims to help dna to identify missed donation opportunities and effectively meet regulatory requirements.

Tissue recovery and placement services: dna facilitated the donation and recovery of various tissues for transplant purposes.in 2023, 1,845 people donated bone, cardiovascular, dermis, and/or corneal tissue. of these, 1,407 people donated bone for orthopedic purposes, a record number of orthopedic donors and a 36% increase from the prior year. As the leading recovery agency for our heart valve recovery partner, dna facilitated the donation of a record-setting 495 heart valves, after setting the previous record in 2022, with 401 heart valves recovered. Heart valves are most frequently transplanted in pediatric patients. The generosity of 938 people resulted in donated dermis tissue (skin) for burn victims and restorative procedures. In 2023, there were 840 cornea donors. Dna adopted a new model for the placement of corneal tissue for transplant by discontinuing its in-house eye bank processing and placement operations and instead works with a dedicated eye bank. This ensures that dna maximizes transplantation options for the corneal tissue recovered from our generous donors. In addition, many other cardiovascular and orthopedic tissues were donated, including tissues used to decrease the likelihood of rejection in organ recipients and to increase options for bone marrow transplantation.

Hla lab - Donor Network of Arizona provides tissue typing services for donors and potential donors as required to match Donor organs with the proper recipients. In 2023, dna's hla lab performed 542 tests on samples from donors and potential donors.