Dear Colleague,
If you have a patient who needs an organ transplant, you want to know that they will receive the best care from a dedicated team of organ transplantation experts, with short wait times for a deceased donor organ and outcomes that exceed national standards. At Hackensack University Medical Center — one of only a few certified transplant centers in New Jersey — our transplant surgery team performs kidney and pancreas transplants using the latest donor matching protocols and advanced techniques that are only available at the world’s leading transplant centers.
Our matching protocols and transplantation techniques allow us to deliver outstanding outcomes and provide world-class care for your patients closer to where they live and work. Your patients will also benefit from:
- Significantly shorter wait times for a deceased donor kidney when compared to other transplant centers nationally
- Among the best kidney transplant survival rates in the country
- Patient outcomes that significantly exceed the national average.
- The best organ acceptance ratio in the state of NJ
- Our board-certified transplant surgeons — together with a multidisciplinary team of specialty physicians, specially trained transplant nurses, and other healthcare support professionals — will partner with you, your patient, and the patient’s family throughout the whole transplant process. This includes initial evaluation and transplant selection through surgery and follow up care. Additional program benefits include:
- Access to Certified Clinical Transplant Coordinators (CCTC), who coordinate appointments, address financial and insurance issues, and connect patients with resources.
- Pioneering organ transplantation care from leaders in the field who routinely publish research findings and innovations in articles and poster presentations, speak at national and international conferences, and participate in national committees.
- Access to the latest kidney perfusion technologies, such as the LifePort Kidney Transporter — an ex vivo hypothermic machine preservation technology that increases a kidney’s viability and lifespan, improving patient outcomes. Our hospital is the only center in New Jersey to routinely perform kidney transplants with machine perfusion technology.
- A commitment to quality and safety, as evidenced by our Reducing Avoidable Readmissions Effectively (RARE) program that monitors post-transplant patients after discharge to identify those who are at increased risk of readmission. The RARE program contributed to a reduction of readmissions from 26 percent in 2017 to 13 percent in 2018.
- Transplant access for new populations through collaboration with Hackensack University Medical Center’s Bloodless Medicine Program, which provides transfusion-free, safe kidney transplantation to patients whose personal preferences or religious beliefs prevent them from accepting blood or blood products.
- Leading-edge clinical trials and research designed to improve current and future transplantation care for donors and recipients, including multicenter trials such as APOLLO to study the effects of the APO L1 gene in African American transplant donors and recipients.
- A pediatric kidney transplant program providing care for infants as young as one year old and as small as 8 kg in weight.
- A track record of successful transplantation in 70- to 80-year-old patients with end-stagerenal disease who may be ineligible for transplant at other area transplant centers.
Hackensack University Medical Center’s Organ Transplant Division also offers a pancreas transplant program — one of only a few such programs in New Jersey that offers this procedure to patients with uncontrolled diabetes causing life-threatening complications. We perform pancreas-kidney as well as pancreas-only transplants.
We have now expanded to offer consults to patients at Jersey Shore University Medical Center and JFK University Medical Center. If you are interested in learning more about the organ transplantation program at Hackensack University Medical Center, please contact me at 551-996-2608 or by email at Michael.Goldstein@hmhn.org.
We look forward to partnering with you to provide your patients with the very best transplantation care.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Goldstein, M.D., FACS
Director of Organ Transplantation
Hackensack Meridian Health Hackensack University Medical Center
Associate Professor of Surgery, Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine
*Data from the Scientific Registry for Transplant Recipients