The NY Times (“In Discarding of Kidneys, System Reveals Its Flaws“) had an interesting article on one of the main issues of Kidney allocation:
Last year, 4,720 people died while waiting for kidney transplants in the United States. And yet, as in each of the last five years, more than 2,600 kidneys were recovered from deceased donors and then discarded without being transplanted, government data show.
The question is why. One may conclude that the system is just inefficient, yet a closer look reveals that this inefficiency is rooted in many important principles, regulations, and incentives, all while attempting to create a fair system. In order to better understand the issues, we need to understand how kidneys are being allocated in the US: The country is divided into 58 districts. When a kidney of a deceased person becomes available, the system allocates it to the person with the highest priority within that region. This priority is a function of the waiting time, whether a recipient is a child or not, as well as other factors. The system does not consider the projected life expectancy of the recipient or the urgency of the transplant. The allocation is initially local, and only when there is no match, the search expands to other regions. All of that is done while competing against the clock: Kidneys start to degrade after 24-36 hours. The system is allowed to make offers to only a limited set of hospitals at any point in time, and these, in turn, have an hour to respond.
The Operations Room 