End-stage renal disease is one of the most costly chronic diseases for the Brazilian public health system. Dialysis is still the most commonly used procedure, even though transplantation is one of the most recommended treatments. Considering the perspective of operations management as an approach for organisational interventions, the objective of this paper was to propose a new operation model for a transplantation unit in Rio de Janeiro State focused on reducing the patients waiting times in queues. The first step was to conduct a systematic literature review. Then, the kidney transplantation process was modelled using ARIS/IDS notation, which oriented the description and analysis of the operation model of the transplantation unit. A new model was proposed, along with a list of strategic, structural and political decisions to mitigate organisational, network design and budget pass-through logic inconsistences.