In any field, making the best use of time increases an organization’s productivity, but in the area of organ procurement, time is critical. That’s why IIAM is partnering with Statline to improve our electronic capabilities and make our referral, screening and placement processes much more efficient and accurate.

Statline, which, like IIAM, is a subsidiary of MTF, is developing three initiatives that will combine to greatly reduce the time our staff spends talking on the phone and inputting data. Steven Sherer, IIAM Manager, is overseeing the customization, both administratively and operationally; and Lily Mathe, Supervisor of the Organ Placement Coordinators at IIAM, is supervising its efficiency and accuracy. These improvements will also benefit our network of OPOs and researchers.

Electronic Screening will eliminate several steps in the process of matching organ criteria for research and automatically remove major rule-outs by researchers. That’s a big deal, considering that liver research identifies 10 criteria and lung research identifies 20 criteria. We’re currently working on enhancements to the Electronic Screening process and are gearing up for training — with the goal of implementation this quarter.

Web Referrals will enable OPOs to input organ referral data and send it directly to IIAM’s placement coordinators. With IIAM receiving 15 to 25 new donor referrals each day, and most referrals including multiple tissues, the time savings (compared to phone referrals) are profound. Ideally, this initiative will give IIAM enough information to contact researchers. We’re in the process of integrating the Web Referral resource into the IIAM website and would like to roll it out to a beta-test group this quarter.

Push Referrals will automatically provide documentation about an organ referral to researchers, who can then begin a timeline. When implemented in the future, this initiative will enable researchers to analyze every aspect of the referral and, as their research progresses, to look for other avenues of study.