Statement of the health problem or issue: Compared with dialysis, a kidney transplant offers patients a better quality of life and many gain 10 or more years of life expectancy. A transplant also costs the healthcare system less-over a five-year period. Living donor transplants offer further advantages, including superior graft and patient survival compared with deceased donor transplants. Unfortunately, many patients with kidney failure who would benefit from a transplant will never receive one. There is a chronic shortage of organs from deceased donors, and in Canada, the rate of living donor kidney transplantation has stagnated. In addition to the shortage of transplantable kidneys, several other barriers impede patient access to transplantation.~Objective of your project: To determine if a quality improvement intervention provided in chronic kidney disease (CKD) programs (vs. usual care) enables more patients with no recorded contraindications to kidney transplant to complete more steps towards receiving a kidney transplant.~How will you undertake your work? We will conduct a pragmatic two-arm, parallel-group, open-label, registry-based, cluster-randomized, superiority, clinical trial-the Enhance Access to Kidney Transplantation and Living Kidney Donation (EnAKT LKD) trial. Our study will include the 26 chronic kidney disease (CKD) programs in Ontario, Canada which are expected to care for over 10,000 adult patients with CKD (including patients approaching the need for dialysis and patients receiving dialysis) with no recorded contraindications to a kidney transplant during the trial. Patients in 13 of the 26 CKD programs will receive a quality improvement intervention or usual care. The intervention has four main components: (1) support for local quality improvement teams and administrative needs; (2) tailored education and resources for staff, patients, and living kidney donor candidates; (3) support from kidney transplant recipients and living kidney donors; and (4) program-level performance reports and oversight by program leaders. Patients in the other 13 programs will receive usual care and will continue to receive support in accessing kidney transplantation and living kidney donation as usual.~What is unique/innovative about your project? An investigator usually needs to study a large number of patients in a clinical trial to reliably understand the effects of an intervention. Normally, a study with 10,000 patients would cost more than $10 million dollars to conduct; however, this study will provide a reliable answer to the question being asked and can be done at a fraction of the cost. This is because we will use data routinely collected by the healthcare system. The investigator will be able to analyze these healthcare data at the end of the study. This means that the study will cost less than a traditional clinical trial. Also unique to this trial, is that that the intervention was embedded and delivered in routine care.~This pragmatic trial includes all CKD programs in the province of Ontario. By including patients from a variety of backgrounds, the results of the trial should be broadly generalizable.~What is the impact of the proposed research? The EnAKT LKD trial will provide high-quality evidence on whether a multi-component quality improvement intervention helps patients complete more steps towards receiving a kidney transplant. This is important as compared to dialysis, kidney transplant offers patients a better quality of life and many gain 10 or more years of life expectancy. A transplant also costs the healthcare system less. If our intervention is successful, more transplants may ultimately be performed and result in improved survival and a better quality of life for patients with CKD. Kidney transplantation achieves the triple aim in healthcare: better outcomes, better experience of care, and lower costs.
Compared to dialysis, kidney transplantation is associated with improved survival, better quality of life and substantial cost savings to healthcare systems. Despite these advantages, many individuals with kidney failure will never receive a kidney transplant. A multi-component quality improvement intervention (vs. usual care) provided in chronic kidney disease (CKD) programs located in Ontario, Canada was developed to determine if it can enable more patients with no recorded contraindications to kidney transplant to complete more steps towards receiving a kidney transplant. These CKD programs provide care to individuals with CKD (including patients approaching the need for dialysis and patients receiving dialysis). The intervention has four main components: (1) support for local quality improvement teams and administrative needs; (2) tailored education and resources for staff, patients, and living kidney donor candidates; (3) support from kidney transplant recipients and living kidney donors (i.e. Transplant Ambassador Program); and (4) program-level performance reports and oversight by program leaders. The Enhance Access to Kidney Transplantation and Living Kidney Donation (EnAKT LKD) trial will provide high-quality evidence on whether a multi-component quality improvement intervention helps patients complete more steps towards receiving a kidney transplant.