Recent studies have highlighted the need for better understanding of the long-term health outcomes of living donors. Barriers to establishment of a dedicated long-term donor follow-up data system in the United States include infrastructure costs and donor retention. We propose providing all previous and future living donors with a lifelong health insurance benefit for the primary purpose of facilitating acquisition of health information after donation as an alternative to establishment of a dedicated donor follow-up data system. Donors would consent to allow collection and analysis of their medical data, and continuation of insurance coverage would require completion of regular health assessments. The extension of health insurance would be analogous to the established practice of paying people for participation in a research study and would provide a mechanism to engage donors in a new paradigm of postdonation care in which donors are actively involved in their own health maintenance. Rather than acting as an inducement for donation, providing donors with the ability to easily contribute information about their health status represents a practical strategy to acquire the long-term medical information necessary to better inform future generations of living kidney donors.
Keywords: donors and donation: living; editorial/personal viewpoint; ethics and public policy; insurance; kidney transplantation/nephrology; law/legislation; organ transplantation in general; quality of care/care delivery.
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