Reimbursement for living kidney donor follow-up care: How often does donor insurance pay?

Background: Currently, many transplantation centers do not follow former living kidney donors on a long-term basis. Several potential barriers have been identified to provide this follow-up of former living kidney donors, including concerns that donor insurance will not reimburse transplantation centers or primary care physicians for this care. Here, we report the rates at which different insurance companies reimbursed our transplantation center for follow-up visits of living donors. Methods: We collected data on all yearly follow-up visits of living donors billed from January 1, 2007, to December 31, 2010, representing 82 different donors. Concurrent visits of their recipients were available for 47 recipients and were used as a control group. Results: We find that most bills for follow-up visits of living kidney donors were paid by insurance companies, at a rate similar to the reimbursement for recipient follow-up care. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that, for former donors with insurance, inadequate reimbursement should not be a barrier in providing follow-up care.