Large living donor program
Award winning hospital
3-4 years wait for kidney transplant
U.S. News & World Report consistently ranks University Of Pittsburgh Medical Center among the nation’s best hospitals in many specialties. It is also ranked #1 in Pittsburgh.
Blood Type O: 52 months
Blood Type B: 58 months
Blood Type A: 43 months
UPMC is unique because it serves as both a nationally recognized health care provider and a major health insurer.
UPMC is unusual among transplant centers because it’s both a top medical provider and a health insurer.
Robust living donor program. On average, UPMC has been performing 70 living donor transplants and 130 cadaveric transplants annually. Their living donor transplant program includes paired exchange, if you have a potential living donor who is not compatable to you.
High rate of inactively waitlisted patients. As the oldest transplant program in Pennsylvania, this center once managed a waitlist of more than 1,000 patients. Today the list has decreased to roughly 600, yet about 50% remain inactive. Many of these patients have been inactive for several years, a strong indicator that they may no longer qualify for transplant.
A well-known rivalry exists between the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Allegheny General Hospital.
JoAnn shared her experience with us in 2022. She encountered significant resistance when trying to multi-list at both UPMC and AGH, with staff explaining that “the donor organs are within the same community.” However, the data at that time told a different story. UPMC had nearly four times more kidney transplant candidates on its waitlist compared to AGH (767 vs. 199), despite both centers receiving a similar number of deceased-donor kidneys. This difference in waitlist size, rather than organ supply, created a meaningfully different patient experience and potential wait time at the two programs—highlighting why multi-listing can still be valuable within the same region.
JoAnn shared her experience with us in 2022. She was discouraged from multi-listing at both UPMC and AGH because she was told the donor organs come from the same community. But the waitlist numbers showed a real difference: UPMC had about four times more kidney transplant candidates (767 vs. 199), even though both centers received a similar number of deceased-donor kidneys.
The HUGE difference to me is the living donor program where UPMC’s is totally internal and AGH’s involves the National Kidney registry, JoAnn explained.
In 2025, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center transplanted about 27% of the patients who were removed from the waitlist. Roughly 15% of waitlisted patients received a kidney through a living donor. Nearly 40% of patients who were waiting last year remain on the waitlist today, waiting for transplant. Overall, more patients were removed from the list for becoming medically ineligible than were transplanted.
Over the past decade, the kidney transplant waiting list at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has declined significantly, from over 700 patients in 2014 to under 500 in 2024. However, this reduction is largely attributed to patients being removed from the list due to medical deterioration during the prolonged wait, as the annual supply of cadaveric kidneys—averaging just 120 per year—has not kept pace with demand.
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