How do you credential your recovery team?  

ProCure’s credentialing process is similar to what a surgeon applying for privileges at a hospital might undergo, and it is much more rigorous than any other organ recovery surgeon credentialing process (i.e., ACIN application via the local OPO) we have encountered. In addition to an application detailing their education and professional history, all surgeons must submit case logs demonstrating the depth and breadth of their organ recovery experience, and all surgeons must provide references who can attest to their technical proficiency and professionalism. Even with a satisfactory application, there is a low threshold to require a candidate surgeon to perform joint cases with experienced ProCure surgeons as proctors to ensure quality.  

We don’t stop there; we ensure the team has opportunities for ongoing, recovery-focused education to ensure clinical excellence and collaborative OR behavior.

How do you ensure consistency in practice across your vast network? 

Though ProCure takes care to recruit and credential surgeons with demonstrated expertise in organ recovery, we are aware of the variation of practice and experience that exists even in this carefully-selected group. We have therefore developed a library of technical guidelines (“Practice Recommendations”), which were written by the ProCure team with the dual purposes of diminishing variability of routine practice, as well as ensuring the readiness of the ProCure team when confronted with relatively rare, but still quality-threatening, situations. This simultaneous focus on the common and the uncommon, in a prospective manner, provides greater predictability to our clients, and simplifies our quality oversight process. 

What you do is complicated, how do you manage adverse events? 

We’ve talked above about what we do on the front end with our rigorous credentialing/training processes and ongoing education efforts. We also foster a belief system rooted in continuous learning and transparency. To track and learn from adverse events, we have a range of processes. Surgeons self-report issues in the OR; in addition, any client and team member can also report an issue through our incident tracking process. These reports go into our incident management system. We track clinical issues, which include surgical/case quality as well as professional demeanor; but we also track issues around transportation, supplies, billing, etc. Quality/clinical issues go directly to our Director of Quality, a PA with a clinical/transplant background, who manages the incident review process including involving a cross-functional Quality Committee and reporting to affected clients, if appropriate. In addition, we conduct weekly cross-functional case reviews (successes and opportunities), and on a bi-weekly basis, we do deep dive clinical case reviews in the style of the “morbidity and mortality” conferences which are a familiar and productive component of conventional clinical practice. 

While many parts of organ recovery inherently present a high level of unpredictability, we work hard to provide structure and precision to the aspects we can – from careful selection of who is credentialed into our network and how they are trained, to ensuring clear protocols are followed when unexpected challenges arise.