Supporting living donors through the Circle of Excellence

Fresenius Medical Care (FME) is part of the American Society of Transplantation’s (AST) Living Donor Circle of Excellence, a program designed to remove important barriers to living donors. Recovering from donor surgery takes time, and donors may experience lost wages due to taking time off from work, possibly creating significant financial hardship for them. The Circle of Excellence tries to address this by recognizing leading organizations, such as FME, that take a stand and amend their paid time off policy to explicitly include living donation.

In 2022, FME joined the AST Living Donor Circle of Excellence by providing six weeks of 100% paid time off to employees in North America. Later on, FME extended this benefit to its global employee footprint.

To learn more, watch this interview between John Gill, MD, Professor of Medicine and Academic Head of Kidney Transplantation at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and founder of the Living Donor Circle of Excellence, and Benjamin Hippen, MD, Global Head of Clinical Affairs at Fresenius Medical Care, in which they discuss the Living Donor Circle of Excellence program.