Title
Gerrymandering for Justice: Redistricting U.S. Liver Allocation
Abstract
U.S. organ allocation policy sequesters livers from deceased donors within arbitrary geographic boundaries, frustrating the intent of those who wish to offer the livers to transplant candidates based on medical urgency. We used a zero-one integer program to partition 58 donor service areas into between four and eight sharing districts that minimize the disparity in liver availability among districts. Because the integer program necessarily suppressed clinically significant differences among patients and organs, we tested the optimized district maps with a discrete-event simulation tool that represents liver allocation at a per-person, per-organ level of detail. In April 2014, the liver committee of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network OPTN decided in a unanimous vote of 22-0-0 to write a policy proposal based on our eight-district and four-district maps. The OPTN board of directors could implement the policy after the proposal and public-comment period.Redistricting liver allocation would save hundreds of lives over the next five years and would attenuate the serious geographic inequity in liver transplant offers.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1287/inte.2015.0810
Interfaces
Keywords
Field
DocType
healthcare,liver,location allocation,redistricting,set partitioning,transplantation,zero-one integer programming
Health care,Location-allocation,Gerrymandering,Engineering,Procurement,Transplantation,Redistricting,Operations management
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
45
5
0092-2102
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.35
8
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sommer Gentry1342.58
Eric Chow210.35
Allan Massie310.35
Dorry Segev410.35