Aligning with the institutional mission to increase access to care, UTMB’s Kidney Transplant Program makes great strides to help patients with end-stage kidney disease achieve better health. Through its outreach and service across Texas, the team is having a widespread impact for patients with the greatest need.
Established in 1967, UTMB’s Kidney Transplant Program was the first in the Houston-Galveston region and has performed more than 3,500 transplants to date, with an excellent record of patient outcomes. Patients from all over Texas and neighboring states have come to UTMB for transplant services, thanks to a strong referral network.
In 2015, the program took a significant step to further its impact, first making several internal updates to enhance the delivery of care, like optimizing help for patients with higher antibody numbers and innovating opportunities to best utilize kidneys available for transplant. Then, the team examined the issue of access.
“We looked at our geography, we looked at patient needs, and we devised this program of our transplant outreach where we specifically went to the areas where transplant services were not available,” says Muhammad Mujtaba, MD, FASN, Medical Director for Kidney and Pancreas Transplants.
This outreach program led to the establishment of clinics in Texas cities such as McAllen, Victoria, and Beaumont.
“People were in dire need, and those areas have some of the highest incidence of end-stage kidney disease,” Dr. Mujtaba says.
For individuals in these working-class communities, Dr. Mujtaba says the expenses of traveling out of town for pre- and post-transplant visits would make the operation financially prohibitive.
Through this program, the patient has the transplant procedure at UTMB, but all other care can be administered at the outreach clinic in their community. UTMB team members travel to these locations three to four times a month to perform transplant evaluations and post-transplant care. They are capable of performing living donor evaluations in these locations as well.
“Instead of these patients coming all the way to Galveston, we go there. It is a step toward increasing access as well as equity; a lot of those patients do not have the funds to travel,” he says.
While outreach is taking place in these cities, the program also operates full-time in Galveston and League City. The Kidney Transplant Program has achieved new highs, with record numbers of referrals and transplants performed while maintaining excellent transplant outcomes.
The program continues to innovate so that even more patients can benefit. A recent enhancement, implemented in May 2023, is the addition of one-day recipient evaluation, which expedites listing of patient to transplant wait list. UTMB Transplant proud to offer flexible living donor evaluation options for living donors. A prospective living donor at UTMB can choose one day or stage evaluation based on their time availability.
“Our patients love this approach. They speak very highly of how efficient and organized we are, but the truth is, we could not do this without the commitment from other departments, like Radiology, the ECHO lab, Pathology, and others,” says Charles Machner, MSN, RN, Administrative Director of Transplant Services. “It’s become a model for efficiency, and it’s been a game-changer for us.”
The program has also begun to offer paired donation kidney transplant services, also called a “kidney swap,” which provides opportunities for patients whose living donor is not compatible with them but may be compatible with another patient elsewhere in the country. Through this process, two living donor transplants can occur.
With more than 93,000 individuals listed for a kidney transplant, UTMB’s Kidney Transplant Program aims to make the process as easy as possible for patients, as well as encourage more individuals to consider becoming living donors.
“We want to maximize our patient capabilities, as well as the timeliness of evaluating a patient and listing them, so they can get a timely transplant,” Dr. Mujtaba says. “They can get off dialysis, be an active member of the community, and fully participate in all the activities that are important to them.”