Medicare Care Choices Model Improved End-Of-Life Care, Lowered Medicare Expenditures, And Increased Hospice Use.

The Medicare Care Choices Model (MCCM) tested a new option for eligible Medicare beneficiaries to receive conventional treatment for terminal conditions along with supportive and palliative care from participating hospice providers. Using claims data, we estimated differences in average outcomes from enrollment to death between deceased MCCM enrollees and matched comparison beneficiaries who received usual services covered by original Medicare. Enrollees were 15 percentage points less likely to receive an aggressive life-prolonging treatment at the end of life and spent more than five more days at home. MCCM also reduced net Medicare expenditures by 13 percent, decreased inpatient admissions by 26 percent, reduced outpatient emergency department visits by 12 percent, and increased hospice use by 18 percentage points. Although the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not expand the model, given concerns about generalizability, these results provide evidence that MCCM is a promising approach to transforming care delivery at the end of life.

Systematic CKD Care Approaches: A Potential Solution for the Costly ESRD Program.

Care of patients with advanced kidney disease includes dialysis, kidney transplant, vascular access, primary care, and other specialist care, which are often siloed among multiple physicians, dialysis clinics, vascular access centers, and health system or hospital-based transplant programs. Other than the patient themselves, no one provider has holistic patient visibility or responsibility. Given that hospitals often lose money on Medicare patients who require dialysis services, momentum from innovation in advanced kidney care management, new technology with the potential for reduced costs, expansion of Medicare Advantage, and Medicare incentives for home dialysis could be leveraged by health systems to ultimately reduce the nearly $50 billion annual Federal spending on patients with kidney failure in the United States. Health systems, which offer many primary and specialty care services, may be uniquely positioned to leverage the more favorable economics associated with these changes to move kidney care from siloed, provider-centric care to integrated, patient-centric care. With 60% of patients initiating dialysis through an unplanned hospitalization, a holistic health system approach that includes offerings of kidney care management and kidney replacement therapy could move financial incentives away from the interests of any single provider and toward better addressing the total needs and the goals of the patient.

Hidden Costs Associated with Conversion from Peritoneal Dialysis to Hemodialysis.

Background: Increasing use of peritoneal dialysis (PD) will likely lead to increasing numbers of patients transitioning from PD to hemodialysis (HD). We describe the characteristics of patients who discontinued PD and converted to HD, trajectories of acute-care encounter rates and the total cost of care both before and after PD discontinuation, and the incidence of modality-related outcomes after PD discontinuation. Methods: We analyzed data in the United States Renal Data System to identify patients aged ≥12 years who were newly diagnosed with ESKD in 2001-2017, initiated PD during the first year of ESKD, and discontinued PD in 2009-2018. We estimated monthly rates of hospital admissions, observation stays, emergency department encounters, and Medicare Parts A and B costs during the 12 months before and after conversion from PD to HD, and the incidence of home HD initiation, death, and kidney transplantation after conversion to in-facility HD. Results: Among 232,699 patients who initiated PD, there were 124,213 patients who discontinued PD. Among them, 68,743 (55%) converted to HD. In this subgroup, monthly rates of acute-care encounters and total costs of care to Medicare sharply increased during the 6 months preceding PD discontinuation, peaking at 96.2 acute-care encounters per 100 patient-months and $20,701 per patient in the last month of PD. After conversion, rates decreased, but remained higher than before conversion. Among patients who converted to in-facility HD, the cumulative incidence of home HD initiation, death, and kidney transplantation at 24 months was 3%, 25%, and 7%, respectively. Conclusions: The transition from PD to HD is characterized by high rates of acute-care encounters and health-care expenditures. Quality improvement efforts should be aimed at improving transitions and encouraging both home HD and kidney transplantation after PD discontinuation.

Overcoming Barriers for Uptake and Continued Use of Home Dialysis: An NKF-KDOQI Conference Report.

Home dialysis modalities are used in a minority of patients with kidney failure in the United States. During the 2018 National Kidney Foundation-Kidney Disease Outcomes Quality Initiative (NKF-KDOQI) Home Dialysis Conference, numerous ideas were suggested to help minimize barriers for the uptake and retention of home dialysis therapies. First, educational tools are needed to increase knowledge about home dialysis modalities (eg, continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis, continuous cycling peritoneal dialysis, and home hemodialysis). Implementation of a hub and spoke model, pairing smaller and/or newer home dialysis programs with larger more sophisticated programs that offer education and mentoring, may help dialysis programs to grow and prosper. This pairing can be facilitated by traditional conferences and newer modalities such as telemedicine and training applications. Peer support to patients, such as that offered through the NKF Peers Program, and support and respite to care partners can have beneficial effects toward both increasing the number of patients who choose home dialysis as a modality and improving retention in home dialysis programs. Anticipating and understanding both patient and care partner burden is important for the development and implementation of patient- and care partner-centered support programs that can be deployed before a patient ceases home therapy. Finally, aligning Medicare reimbursement to support appropriate increased home dialysis uptake to prioritize both transplantation and home dialysis as the first-line treatments for kidney failure.

Culture and Process Change as a Priority for Patient Engagement in Medicines Development.

Patient Focused Medicines Development (PFMD) is a not-for-profit independent multinational coalition of patients, patient stakeholders, and the pharmaceutical industry with interests across diverse disease areas and conditions. PFMD aims to facilitate an integrated approach to medicines development with all stakeholders involved early in the development process. A key strength of the coalition that differentiates it from other groups that involve patients or patient groups is that PFMD has patient organizations as founding members, ensuring that the patient perspective is the starting point when identifying priorities and developing solutions to meet patients' needs. In addition, PFMD has from inception been formed as an equal collaboration among patient groups, patients, and pharmaceutical industry and has adopted a unique trans-Atlantic setup and scope that reflects its global intent. This parity extends to its governance model, which ensures at least equal or greater share of voice for patient group members. PFMD is actively inviting additional members and aims to expand the collaboration to include stakeholders from other sectors. The establishment of PFMD is particularly timely as patient engagement (PE) has become a priority for many health stakeholders and has led to a surge of mostly disconnected activities to deliver this. Given the current plethora of PE initiatives, an essential first step has been to determine, based on a comprehensive mapping, those strategic areas of most need requiring a focused initial effort from the perspective of all stakeholders. PFMD has identified four priority areas that will need to be addressed to facilitate implementation of PE. These are (1) culture and process change, (2) development of a global meta-framework for PE, (3) information exchange, and (4) training. This article discusses these priority themes and ongoing or planned PFMD activities within each.