Banner Health and Donor Network of Arizona Open Arizona’s First Donor Care Center

Banner Health and Donor Network of Arizona (DNA) have officially opened a new unit at Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix. With a formal ribbon cutting Thursday, May 23, 2024, it’s called the donor care center (DCC), and it’s dedicated to the care of organ donors to make better use of the gifts they offer and save even more lives.

Now, organ donors who meet criteria will be transported, from the originating hospital to which they were admitted, to the DCC for continued donor care. Banner Health and DNA finalized agreements in November 2023.

Among other recommendations, the Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) committee suggested in a report that organ procurement organizations should establish a DCC as a best practice.

DNA determined that a hospital-based DCC would magnify the generosity of donors and their families, expand the impact on lives saved through transplantation, and increase effectiveness for an ever-changing health care environment. Banner Health collaborated to help make it happen.

Arizona’s first DCC has dedicated ICU beds and OR space to promote consistent care and treatment of up to four donors at a time. This change addresses some resource constraints, such as access to medical services, staffing and OR space, to name a few. The DCC is also centrally located in the state and near Sky Harbor International Airport, which will help make donor care and organ allocation more efficient.

The originating hospital from where the donor is referred, in turn, will benefit by shifting priority to other types of procedures in their own ORs, which DNA has historically shared, as well as freeing up ICU bed space that a donor would occupy ahead of a scheduled donated organ recovery.

Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix is a large teaching hospital that has provided medical care to Arizona and the Southwest since 1911. It is part of Banner – University Medicine, a premier academic medical network. The institution, which has trained thousands of doctors over decades as a teaching hospital, is the academic medical center for The University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix.