SPOTLIGHT ON EDUCATION: What You Need to Know About the 1-800 Donor Hotline

 

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Ever wondered who you were speaking to when calling the 1-800 donor hotline?  Here is the low-down of the Who, What, Where, Why and How of making the donor referral.

Who: Calls to the donor hotline in our region are answered by specially trained representatives from a national answering service called Statline. Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network, as well as over half of the country’s organ procurement organizations and eye and tissue recovery agencies, has a special agreement with Statline.

What: Statline provides the initial referral screening to determine which agency should be contacted for a response back to the referring hospital or facility. In our area, ventilated patients with a heartbeat are triaged out to the Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network, and those without a heartbeat are paged out to the appropriate eye and tissue banks.

Where: The Statline Communication Center is located in Greenwood Village, Colorado, just south of Denver. Despite the distance, we have a close partnership with Statline to ensure dependable and friendly service to our hospitals.

Why: Timing is vital when it comes to optimizing and maximizing every opportunity to save lives through organ donation. With thousands of referrals made each year in our donation service area, we simply do not have the manpower or technology to expedite the referral process. The service provided by Statline enables us to manage referrals in real-time and respond quickly back to referring hospitals.

How: When hospital personnel call the donor hotline to report a death or imminent death, they should be prepared to answer the following questions:

• Hospital name, patient care unit, caller name/title, caller phone number
• Patient name, age, sex, weight, medical number, date/time of admission, reason for admission
• Ventilated or non-ventilated
• Date and time of death (if applicable)

Based on the information provided, Statline will then page a coordinator from Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network if the patient’s death is imminent (ventilated and with a heartbeat). Patients who do not have a heartbeat are referred to the eye and tissue bank. Once that happens, the responding agency will call back to the referring hospital to gather more medical information and determine next steps.