Description
Dr. Diwakar Gupta 
Professor, Department of Information, Risk, and Operations Management McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin
The Impact of List Diving on Post-Transplant Outcomes
Transplant programs often turn down deceased-donor kidney offers for their top-ranked potential transplant recipients (PTRs) and utilize them for lower-ranked PTRs. This practice is known as list diving. PTRs in the US are ranked based on an evidence- and consensus-based policy that reflects the collective judgment of stakeholders in the kidney transplant ecosystem. Because list diving upends the consensus ranking, concerns have been raised about its impact on the national system. In this talk, I will present an empirical analysis of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) data to quantify the impact of list diving decisions on short- and long-term survival of PTRs after accounting for the endogeneity of such decisions. I will also illustrate the impact of list diving on skipped candidates. The analysis shows that while list diving improves 5-year survival rate, especially among transplants involving lower quality kidneys, it increases wait times of skipped candidates. A significant minority of skipped candidates do not receive transplants and either die or are removed from waitlist. The study highlights the need for greater oversight over transplant programs’ utilization decisions.
Biography
Diwakar Gupta holds an appointment as the INBA–Stuart Centennial Professor of Information, Risk, and Operations Management at the McCombs School of Business of The University of Texas at Austin. His research spans healthcare operations, supply chain finance and risk management, and inventory and revenue management. He serves as the departmental editor of healthcare operations department at the Naval Research Logistics journal and as senior editor of healthcare operations management department at the POM journal. He teaches healthcare analytics at UT Austin.
