Michelle Carver, BSN, RN, CNN

With the kidney disease community facing a particularly high risk of COVID-19 and becoming hospitalized, a safe transition from in-center hemodialysis to home dialysis is more critical than ever.

The growing consensus in the kidney community is greater home dialysis use is essential to achieving clinical, patient quality-of-life and public policy objectives. Providers acknowledge the need to reframe how we think about delivering dialysis care to patients. As Adam Boehler, director of the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), notes, treatment for patients with kidney failure should be “transplant wherever possible; if not, [treatment at] home wherever possible; and it should be a last resort that people go to a dialysis center.”