At issue is a once widely used test that overestimated how well Black people’s kidneys were functioning, making them look healthier than they really were — all because of an automated formula that calculated results for Black and non-Black patients differently. That race-based equation could delay diagnosis of organ failure and evaluation for a transplant, exacerbating other disparities that already make Black patients more at risk of needing a new kidney but less likely to get one.
A few years ago, the National Kidney Foundation and American Society of Nephrology prodded laboratories to switch to race-free equations in calculating kidney function. Then the U.S. organ transplant network ordered hospitals to use only race-neutral test results in adding new patients to the kidney waiting list.
Dr. Martha Pavlakis (of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and former chair of the network’s kidney committee) calls what happened next an attempt at restorative justice: The transplant network gave hospitals a year to uncover which Black kidney candidates could have qualified for a new kidney sooner if not for the race-based test — and adjust their waiting time to make up for it. That lookback continues for each newly listed Black patient to see if they, too, should have been referred sooner.
Because this test has been around for literal decades. People don’t like finding out what they learned as fact is wrong and admin doesn’t want to spend the money changing. Racism and sexism are alive and well in hospitals. Clinically a new clinical test has to be found, go through a rigorous validation before it will be accepted (even new machines may take months to year+ to be validated). Then the test has to be scaled to where the pricing isn’t that different or better than the original.The fight to change this has taken a lot more effort and been going on longer than the article thinks.