Spanning more than 413,000 square miles across Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, University of Utah Health’s lung transplant team is the only program in the Mountain West serving this vast region. Through aggressive and coordinated outreach, the team is connecting with rural physicians and hospitals, bringing expert care closer to patients, and ultimately saving more lives than ever before.
Over the past five years, the program has seen remarkable growth, fueled by a dedicated commitment to outreach. From these efforts, in just the past year, referrals increased by 11%, evaluations by 17%, and transplants by 14%, while the time from referral to evaluation dropped by an impressive 41%.
This combination of volume, speed, and outcomes has propelled the program to national prominence and earned it a spot among 22 centers in the country selected for the Institutes for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Lung Transplant Collaborative, aiming to boost transplant volume by 30% nationwide within 18 months.
Behind this growth is a focused strategy: expanding donor organ procurement, redefining waitlist criteria, and most notably, increasing regional outreach. These efforts are connecting providers and patients, including the first outreach clinic launching in Boise, Idaho this fall.
Today, the program continues to support over 200 lung transplant patients, and by the end of this year, it is projected to complete 45–48 transplants, more than triple the volume of just a few years ago.
This is what it looks like when a team doesn’t just sit and wait, they go to where people need help the most. For families across our vast region, that can mean the difference between dying on a waitlist and getting a second chance at life.
