Improving Organ Procurement Operations

In this discussion paper, Blueprint Co-Director Nikhil Agarwal, Hammaad Adam, and Marzyeh Ghassemi study how decisions made by organ procurement organizations (OPOs)—non-profits that coordinate organ recovery from deceased donors—affect the availability of organs for transplant in the United States. They develop a structural econometric model of a pivotal OPO decision: whether to approach a potential donor’s family to request authorization for donation.