UC Davis to begin caring for Kaiser kidney transplant patients

The first wave of patients from Kaiser Permanente’s suspended kidney transplant program in San Francisco will start transitioning to UC Davis over the next couple of weeks.

The transition plan is the result of several weeks of intense discussions among transplant specialists and operations managers at UC Davis, UC San Francisco and Kaiser, as well as state and federal regulators at the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and the Department of Managed Health Care.

Kaiser officials announced on May 12 that it would shut down its relatively new transplant center and transfer some 2,000 Northern California patients to established programs at UC Davis and UC San Francisco. Both UC medical centers had contracts with Kaiser for transplant services before Kaiser established its own unit in 2004.

“We are happy to be caring for Kaiser patients again and are prepared to accept patients from the Northern California region who choose to have their pre- and three-month, post-transplant care at UC Davis,” said Richard Perez, professor of surgery and director of the UC Davis Transplant Center. “We are committed to smoothly transitioning patients to our program and will be evaluating them on a priority basis so they can be transplanted as soon as an organ becomes available.”

UC Davis transplant specialists received the medical records for 27 Kaiser patients this morning and will be scheduling evaluations with patients whose records have complete data within a week. UC Davis expects to receive as many as 35 of the 141 patients that Kaiser has placed on their "status 1" list, which includes patients who Kaiser has considered most ready to receive a cadaveric or living donor transplant. Transpant surgeries for some of these patients will be scheduled later this month.