For background, see “Carilion wants to start a kidney transplant program in Roanoke. State health officials, and UVa, oppose it” by Cardinal health care reporter Emily Schabacker.
For an opposing point of view, see this opinion piece by Carilion’s Dr. David Salzberg.
For more than 25 years, UVA Health has been committed to the community members of Southwest Virginia, providing high-quality, life-saving kidney transplant care for patients in need. Providing the best outcomes for our patients and the best possible access to kidney transplants are our top priorities. We know that some residents of Southwest Virginia are asking why we oppose establishing a second kidney transplant program in the region. Here’s why: we believe adding a second program will harm patient outcomes without making it easier or safer for the residents of Southwest Virginia to receive a kidney transplant.
Numerous national, peer-reviewed studies show transplant centers that perform larger numbers of transplants, like UVA Health, have better outcomes than smaller programs. So far this year, our team has performed more than 260 kidney transplants for patients from across Virginia and beyond. UVA Health’s one-year survival rates are 97%, above the national average. The infrastructure and scale of our program, plus the experience and expertise of our team, benefit our transplant patients, including those from Southwest Virginia.
Secondly, Southwest Virginians who are eligible for kidney transplants already receive transplants at the same rate as eligible patients in Northern Virginia, according to data from the federal Census Bureau and the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. More than 1,100 people from Southwest Virginia received transplants at UVA Health since 1997 when we began our kidney care program here. Opening a second, smaller kidney transplant center here will not increase the rate of transplants that occur.
That is because the No. 1 barrier to patients receiving kidney transplants is not the number of transplant programs or where kidney transplants are performed. Instead, it is the availability of appropriately matched, transplantable organs. A second transplant center in the region would not make more kidneys available for transplants for the people of Southwest Virginia. Instead, those transplants would be divided between what would become two smaller transplant programs — and as we have highlighted above, smaller transplant programs have worse outcomes for patients.
We know that for residents of Southwest Virginia in need of a kidney transplant, frequent travel to Charlottesville can be both a burden and a barrier to getting the care they need. So for 27 years, UVA Health has focused on operating outpatient transplant clinics in Roanoke, Martinsville and Lynchburg. These clinics are staffed with team members who live in Southwest Virginia and know the region and its residents well. To improve access further, we’re planning a fourth outpatient kidney transplant clinic in Southwest Virginia, scheduled to open in 2025. These outpatient clinics are particularly important in kidney care because 90% of a kidney transplant patient’s care is provided outside the hospital. We believe better survival rates are worth the limited number of trips to Charlottesville that our patients require, especially when our program has also focused on delivering pre- and post-transplant care in local clinics closer to home.
Finally, our team uses its experience and expertise to ensure our patients have quicker access to transplants by efficiently matching patients with the most suitable organs, improving patients’ outcomes. UVA Health also helps patients address financial barriers, remove logistical challenges and tackle other non-medical factors that affect transplants’ most vulnerable patients and their families.
While a new organ transplant program in Southwest Virginia might seem convenient initially, it risks diverting regionalized resources into a less-experienced program, potentially compromising care quality and outcomes for the patients of Central and Southwest Virginia. Our goal is for all our kidney transplant patients in Virginia to not only survive, but to thrive — and our experience, the skill of our transplant team and the comprehensive support programs we provide both before and after a transplant help our patients do just that.
UVA Health is proud to be the transplant center serving residents of Southwest Virginia, and we look forward to continuing to provide the highest-quality care across the region for many years to come.
Dr. Alden Doyle is director of transplant quality at UVA Health. Dr. Shawn J. Pelletier is director of the transplant service line and chief of the Division of Transplant Surgery at UVA Health.
