The transplant community is at a pivotal moment, with more attention on how each entity can innovate and improve outcomes through increased transparency and efficiency. This momentum is aiding in full scale process changes with the intent to resolve challenges like collecting timely patient information and successfully engaging patients to accelerate their progress through the waitlist process.

DaVita, a leading provider of kidney health services, has long recognized the need for collaboration across the transplant community to seek and develop new solutions. “We want to break down silos and improve communication among disparate groups of stakeholders,” Dr. Michael O’Shea, vice president of clinical affairs for DaVita, said.

And DaVita’s investment in working with transplant centers and others to move the transplant system forward led to the acquisition of MedSleuth, a cutting-edge transplant software company with more than 10 years of expertise in the space.

Collectively, DaVita and MedSleuth are focusing on engaging and empowering patients in their transplant journeys while improving and streamlining workflows for care teams.

Understanding Opportunities, Creating Solutions

Through its digital platforms and solutions, MedSleuth aims to transform data exchange and communications for caregivers while also increasing access to living donation through paired donor exchange.

“We knew DaVita was the right home for MedSleuth because we share a commitment to expanding access to this incredible treatment option,” said Ben Nightingale, chief operating officer for MedSleuth. “As we work toward this vision in collaboration with the transplant community, we’re enabling teams to spend less time managing process and more time responding to individual patient’s needs. This patient-centric approach to innovation drives us.”

MedSleuth’s flagship software, BREEZE Transplant™ is an end-to-end platform that streamlines health information exchange between providers, transplant centers and patients from early referral intake and waitlist management to living donor/recipient evaluation and follow-up.

Through BREEZE, people involved with the transplant process — patients, their treating nephrologists, the transplant center teams and other relevant care providers (like DaVita care teams) — have generated efficiencies to give transplant center coordinators and nurses time back to focus on higher quality patient-facing care activities.

“It’s about saving time for transplant teams,” Nightingale shared. “Our platform manages the transplant patient’s journey in one place. Bidirectional communication and status updates are examples of how BREEZE reduces the gaps in information that create frustration and missed opportunities. Referring providers have a better experience, and transplant centers get capacity back for their top priorities.”

In 2021, the transplant team at UC Davis faced a challenge: They experienced an unsustainable backlog of more than 1,200 referrals for transplant evaluation, and they were receiving roughly 200 to 250 new referrals per month.

They needed a solution that would add efficiency to their workstreams. The team implemented a new approach, integrating BREEZE into referral management, which helped standardize their process and centralize communications.

Over the course of two years, BREEZE’s capabilities helped the UC Davis Health team facilitate complete record and patient data exchange and automate messaging. During this time, their new process — aided by BREEZE — improved satisfaction for patients, staff and providers. It also helped the team to effectively reduce their backlog by 80%.[1]

Incorporating MedSleuth Solutions at DaVita

DaVita is currently embedding BREEZE at the center-level. With 100% of DaVita dialysis patients in the U.S. — accounting for approximately 40% of Americans on dialysis referred through their dialysis center — BREEZE will enable DaVita and the transplant centers they work with to collaborate with more standardization and efficiency, allowing for a more cohesive and comprehensive approach to supporting patients in their transplant journeys.

“Just as MedSleuth continues to reimagine the transplant process, DaVita continues to expand collaboration with transplant centers across the country,” said Nightingale. “We’re partnering with the transplant community to redefine an experience that puts patients, and their expanded access to transplant, first.”

And already, the MedSleuth technology is having an impact, helping to accelerate processes and alleviate administrative burdens:

“Standardized MedSleuth referrals have helped free up the time of our social workers, letting them focus their efforts on vulnerable patients who need help navigating the waitlist and referral process,” says Megan Fitzsimmons, a division lead social worker at DaVita.

And, this will continue to evolve as DaVita works to integrate the software with their first-of-its-kind electronic health record (EHR), Center Without Walls™, to automate and simplify knowledge sharing. Both MedSleuth’s BREEZE and DaVita’s Center Without Walls platforms are designed to simplify how care teams, across different locations, manage and track the data they need to better serve patients. By integrating BREEZE into the EHR, DaVita hopes to foster unified work across teams that emphasize improved outcomes:

“Having more information shared between entities with a totally streamlined communication process helps our teams better collaborate,” said Will Maixner, senior national director of transplant for DaVita. “Expanding the use of MedSleuth’s technology has empowered our teams to focus less on administrative process and more on what matters most: our patients.”