Funeral Home Survey Will Lead to Stronger Partnerships

To better serve donor families and potential donor families, the Northwest Tissue Services is developing and implementing a new funeral home program. The purpose of this program is to improve the communication and strengthen our collaborative partnerships with funeral homes in Washington, Montana and northern Idaho.

We also hope to provide educational resources about tissue donation, recovery, and transplantation to the funeral directors and their clients. Over the past two years, a task force with representatives from the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA), American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB), and the Association of Organ Procurement Agencies (AOPO) put together and sent out surveys to reach an agreement on a set of “Best Practices for Organ and Tissue Donation”. This agreement covers: notification, disclosure, recovery practices, reimbursement, communication/education, and support for donation.

In the fall of 2001, we are planning to distribute a survey to all the regional funeral homes. Our purpose in this survey is to determine how best to implement the provisions of these guidelines with our regional funeral home partners. For more information about the Funeral Home Program, call 1-800-858-2282.