Home Dialysis News

Advancing American Kidney Health, an executive order signed by President Donald J. Trump in July, has the goals of reducing the number of Americans developing ESRD by 25% by 2030; having 80% of new patients with ESRD in 2025 either receiving dialysis at home or having a transplant; and doubling the number of kidneys available for transplant by 2030. To accomplish these goals, suppliers of home dialysis equipment plan to ramp up production in the coming years.

Implementation of an integrated health care delivery model increased the rate of home-based peritoneal dialysis for patients with advanced kidney disease, according to a recently published study.

According to results, a significantly higher risk of infection was seen in patients on hemodialysis compared with patients on peritoneal dialysis after total hip or total knee arthroplasty.

SEATTLE — A new care model underway by pharmacy company CVS and health care insurer Aetna is using nurse practitioners stationed at pharmacies across the country to identify and manage patients with chronic kidney disease.

Dialyze Direct, a company specializing in home dialysis, has announced its expansion into Indiana.

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.”

Editor’s Note: The number of patients on PD in the United States has historically outnumbered those patients choosing home hemodialysis. In Nephrology News & Issues’ 2019 dialysis provider survey, for example, growth in the PD population among the 10 largest providers was quadruple that of home hemodialysis, representing 28% of new patients who started dialysis among these providers from 2018 to 2019 (see page 30 of this issue for the complete survey results).

The 10 largest outpatient dialysis providers in the United States added more than 14,000 new patients to their census during the past year, according to the latest Nephrology News & Issues annual survey.

Evaluating nephrology opportunities and understanding physician contracts can be a daunting task. When looking for their first job with a nephrology practice, new graduates need an understanding of contracting nuances such as inpatient credentialing, working with a dialysis unit and inpatient calls, and joint ventures with large dialysis companies. They also will need to know the language used in contract evaluations and negotiations.

In recent years, an increasing number of patients with ESKD began using home dialysis, according to a recently published study. This growth was seen among all racial and ethnic groups as racial/ethnic differences in initiating home dialysis narrowed.