Don’t All Donors Deserve Donor Shield?

I’ve been emailing, calling, and visiting state legislators and members of Congress for a long time about supporting and protecting living donors. I don’t mean the feel-good kind of support that calls us “heroes” and “awesome folks” but takes no action. I’m talking about finding meaningful ways to remove hurdles that can be deal breakers for so many people who might otherwise consider donating their kidney. While Congress and legislators have been dragging their feet, a terrific model plan has been hiding in plain sight: the National Kidney Registry’s Donor Shield.

First, a little background that may be familiar to some of you: nearly 100,000 people in this country wait years for a kidney, but only about 23,000 kidney transplants were performed last year. Meanwhile, thousands die every year because they didn’t get a kidney (or other organ) in time. For the foreseeable future, our best hope of dramatically changing those appalling odds is through living donation. So, simply put, we need to make it easier for people to manage being live donors.

How? For starters, by providing paid leave for all living donors for donation-related time off work–not just for federal and some state employees (not everyone has paid sick leave, and those who do shouldn’t have to use up their leave time); reimbursing for travel and lodging costs if donating far from home; and covering “incidental” expenses (which can feel anything but incidental: think childcare or eldercare).

You may already know that NKR facilitates paired donation (aka kidney swaps) through the world’s largest database of potential recipients and live donors. If you’ve never heard of Donor Shield, remember that name even if you don’t plan to be part of a paired donation. NKR automatically provides Donor Shield, which encompasses those common-sense protections and so much more, to all its living donors. But if you donate at any of the 90 U.S. transplant centers that’s affiliated with NKR– even if you’re not part of a paired donation!–you would get Donor Shield, too. I’m happy to see that the University of North Carolina Hospitals, where I donated to my son in 2006, is now affiliated with NKR.

The transplant center pays the Donor Shield premium, so there’s no charge for the donor. And there’s no cost to the recipient either. I hasten to add that, because I was shocked–and infuriated–to learn that the National Living Donor Assistance Center bases its eligibility for donor assistance on the recipient’s household income. NLDAC apparently figures that the recipient, who’s already contending with surgery and lost work time, should simply reimburse the donor for any such expenses.

In addition to the benefits and protections for living donors mentioned above, which legislators and federal agencies have been studying for years, Donor Shield also includes additional attractive features, such as providing legal support in the unlikely event that a donor is fired for taking time off to donate or encounters insurance discrimination; and in the rare event that a donor later needs surgery for a donation-related complication that isn’t covered for any reason, Donor Shield will cover it along with lost wages, and travel and lodging expenses for the donor and a companion. That’s at any point, no matter how many years after the donation. And there’s no income-based eligibility for donor or recipient.

Not only are these measures the right thing to do, they obviously save lives by making more transplants possible and taking people off the waitlists. If the moral argument doesn’t sway the powers that be, the economic argument should. Shortening the wait for a kidney, and reducing or even avoiding time on dialysis, saves hospitals and the federal government millions of dollars.

Even if the transplant center you’re donating at isn’t affiliated with NKR, it’s worth asking if they would agree to provide Donor Shield (they can obtain it). The more donors who request it, the more likely centers are to get on board. If only paired donation, NKR, and Donor Shield had been available back when I donated!