The organ transplantation system is viewed as one of our most equitable health care services, but poor patients are effectively excluded by policy that denies Medicaid coverage of post-transplant immunosuppressant medication.
Appropriate use of the pay-for-performance system may improve quality of care by counteracting physician incentives to overtreat in fee-for-service situations or undertreat in capitation plans.
Sheldon Zink, PhD, Rachel Zeehandelaar, and Stacey Wertlieb, MBe
The benefits of the international presumed-consent policy are presented as a solution to the United States' current shortage of organs available for transplantation.
The implementation of breakthrough quality improvement initiatives has been successful in closing the gap between the number of organs that are available and the number of patients who need them.
The objective is to compare the costs of providing the same level of quality. When resource-use and quality measures are juxtaposed, the resources used to provide the same level of quality can be compared.
Eitan Neidich, Alon B. Neidich, David A. Axelrod, MD, and John P. Roberts, MD
Geographic disparities in availability of organs for transplant have spawned for-profit companies that help patients get on waitlists in more than one region and arrange travel for them if an organ becomes available.