Donor organ recovery at freestanding facility increases organ yield, lowers costs

Editor's Note

Obtaining organs from deceased donors in a freestanding facility dedicated to organ recovery costs much less and leads to higher numbers of transplantable organs, this study finds.

Researchers evaluated 6 years of data from the nation’s first freestanding organ recovery facility located in St Louis and owned and operated by Mid-America Transplant. The study compared 281 hospital donors with 766 freestanding facility donors.

The average per-donor cost for organ recovery was $33,161 at the hospital and $16,153 at the freestanding facility. The overall organ yield per donor at the freestanding facility was 3.4 versus 2.7 at the hospital.