The kidney voucher program is an important innovation in paired kidney donation that enables the living-donor procedure to be uncoupled in time from the recipient’s transplantation. This allows for kidney donation to occur when optimal for the donor, and transplantation to occur at a later date, when necessary for the recipient.
Examples of when an individual may donate to the kidney exchange program include:
"While kidney transplant exchanges help resolve biological incompatibility between donors and recipients, the ‘voucher’ program helps resolve chronological incompatibility.” Read Dr. Jeffrey Veale's story in the Wall Street Journal »
“The 'voucher' concept is fundamentally different from all prior 'advanced donations' (previously called ‘out-of-sequence’), as the intended recipients are not in need of a kidney transplant and may never need a kidney transplant.
Interested donors may contact our program by telephone at (866) 672-5333
The kidney voucher program is in association with the National Kidney Registry.
To ensure ethical and efficacious management of gift certificates for future kidney transplantations, the following stipulations should be agreed upon by the intended donor, the intended recipient and the National Kidney Registry:
In order to avoid the transfer of ‘vouchers’ for monetary gain, redemption must be limited to the intended recipient as identified in the informed consent document. The intended recipient is required to have government photo identification. To further insure that the patient receiving the ‘voucher’ kidney is the same person identified on the original consent forms, blood typing and tissue typing is confirmed before the ‘voucher’ is redeemed.