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DPC Comment Letter to CMS Recounts Heartbreaking Story of Rural Dialysis Clinic Closure

2025-08-28T13:48:55+00:00August 28th, 2025|Categories: Comment Letter, Dialysis Funding, Improve Access to Care, Innovation, Policy Issues, Promote Financial Security, Protect Patient Care, Quality Incentive Program, Staffing Shortages, Treatment Options|

DPC has submitted its comments responding to this year’s Medicare ESRD Payment Rule. The Medicare agency is proposing a payment update of only 1.9%, which doesn’t keep pace with increasing costs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compensation costs for civilian workers increased 3.6 percent for the 12-month period ending in June, while inflation was 2.7%. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission recently reported that dialysis clinics’ Medicare margin was –1.1 percent in 2022 and –0.2 percent in 2023. They project a 2025 FFS Medicare margin of 0 percent. The comment letter brought officials’ attention to the story of a [...]

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DPC’s Letter to Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator at Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, on ESRD Prospective Payment System

2025-08-28T13:46:01+00:00August 27th, 2025|Categories: Comment Letter, Dialysis Funding, Improve Access to Care, Innovation, Policy Issues, Promote Financial Security, Protect Patient Care, Quality Incentive Program, Staffing Shortages, Treatment Options|

August 27, 2025 The Honorable Mehmet Oz Administrator Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services 200 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC  20001 Re: CMS-1830-P - End-Stage Renal Disease Prospective Payment System  Dear Dr. Oz: Dialysis Patient Citizens (DPC) writes to offer its comments on the above referenced proposed rule. DPC's membership, currently about 35,000, is restricted to kidney disease patients and their family members. DPC is a patient-led organization.  Our by-laws require that the President, Vice President and at least 51% of the Board be current dialysis patients.  The non-dialysis patients serving on our Board are former dialysis patients with kidney [...]

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DPC Comments to CMS Sound Alarm on Workforce Shortages

2024-08-22T14:11:27+00:00August 20th, 2024|Categories: Article, Comment Letter, Innovation, Medicare Advantage, Promote Financial Security, Protect Patient Care|

In our comments responding to Medicare’s annual ESRD Payment Rule, DPC took the government to task over payment updates that lag increases in labor costs and failure to effectively cover new drugs for dialysis patients. The proposed rule grants a net increase in the base rate of only 0.8% during a year in which wages, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics, rose 4.2%. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission estimates a margin of zero for dialysis facilities in 2024, with many rural and low-volume facilities in the red. This occurs at a time in which a Supreme Court decision has emboldened [...]

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DPC Asks Medicare Officials to Reverse Pruritis Drug Fiasco

2024-06-27T14:45:47+00:00June 12th, 2024|Categories: Advance Patient Choice, Article, Increase Quality of Care, Innovation, Protect Patient Care, Treatment Options|

In a letter to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Dialysis Patient Citizens (DPC) asked for a “do-over” in the rollout of Korsuva, a drug that treats ESRD-related pruritis. Medicare makes an add-on payment for new drugs that expires after two years, leaving uncertainty about how providers can offer such drugs to patients when that period ends. This uncertainty discouraged nephrologists from prescribing the medication. Empirical research has found a prevalence of moderate to severe pruritis among dialysis patients of 33 percent, but Korsuva has been dispensed to fewer than one percent of patients. In the letter, several DPC [...]

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DPC’s Letter to Hon. Jonathan Blum, Principal Deputy Administrator for CMS, on New Drugs in the ESRD PPS

2024-06-27T14:42:14+00:00June 11th, 2024|Categories: Advance Patient Choice, Comment Letter, Increase Quality of Care, Innovation, Protect Patient Care, Treatment Options|

June 11, 2024 The Honorable Jonathan Blum Principal Deputy Administrator Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services 200 Independence Avenue, SW Washington, DC  20515 Re:  New drugs in the ESRD PPS Dear Principal Deputy Administrator Blum: In our comments on the 2024 ESRD payment rule, we expressed our concerns about how patients experienced the rollout of Korsuva, the drug that treats ESRD-related pruritis. We noted that the prescribing behavior of nephrologists has amounted to, in effect, a de facto embargo of the medication. Empirical research has found a prevalence of moderate to severe pruritis among dialysis patients of 33 percent, but [...]

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DPC Seeks Information on Patients’ Experience With Itching

2024-04-24T16:12:21+00:00April 24th, 2024|Categories: Advance Patient Choice, Article, Increase Quality of Care, Innovation, Medicare Advantage, Treatment Options|

A couple of years ago, a new drug was approved to treat ESRD-related pruritis. Medicare approved an additional payment for the drug Korsuva for a period of 2 years. But, because of the short expiration date, very few nephrologists prescribed the medication, so even fewer dialysis facilities dispensed the drug. As a result, Korsuva never took hold to become the standard of care for pruritis. We’d like to know (1) Have experienced pruritis? (2) If so, did your clinicians tell you about Korsuva? We would like to convey patients’ experiences as we ask for Medicare to revisit coverage: what it’s like [...]

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The Trouble With Bundles

2024-03-29T01:09:12+00:00February 19th, 2024|Categories: Increase Quality of Care, Innovation|

This op-ed was written by Jackson Williams, DPC Vice President of Public Policy, and originally published on AMJC's website: www.ajmc.com/view/contributor-the-trouble-with-bundles. Payment bundling is a technique aimed at increasing efficiency and reducing low-value care during a treatment episode.In recent years, it has expanded from prospective payment systems (PPS) centered upon a discrete treatment to encompass broader episodes of care surrounding such treatments. For the most part, policymakers and patient advocates have viewed these bundles as a benign form of cost containment. But a spate of new developments—including evaluation reports relating to CMMI Institute episode-based payment demonstrations and stories of patients unable to [...]

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DPC Expresses Outrage at CMS Indifference to Dialysis Patient Suffering

2024-03-29T01:09:15+00:00October 31st, 2023|Categories: Article, Dialysis Funding, Improve Access to Care, Increase Quality of Care, Innovation, News, Staffing Shortages|

On October 27, 2023, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued its final rule updating payment rates and policies under the end-stage renal disease (ESRD) prospective payment system. This rule fails to address two serious problems currently facing dialysis patients, which DPC raised in its comment letter: workforce shortages and lack of access to innovative treatments. DPC’s statement on the Rule is available here.

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Dialysis Patient Citizens Responds to Disappointing Final CMS Rule That Will Harm Patient Healthcare

2024-03-29T01:09:15+00:00October 30th, 2023|Categories: Dialysis Funding, Innovation, News, Press Release, Staffing Shortages|

WASHINGTON, D.C. (October 30, 2023) - Dialysis Patient Citizens (DPC), the nation’s largest patient-led, non-profit advocacy group for dialysis patients, released the following statement in response to the final rule issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) which only increases Medicare reimbursements for dialysis treatment centers by 1.6% and fails to properly fund access to new therapies. “The End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) final rule released on Friday paints a chilling picture of an agency that is completely indifferent to the suffering of dialysis patients,” said DPC President Andrew Conkling. “The regulation acknowledges the heartbreaking stories from [...]

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Medicare Must Increase Access to Improvements in Dialysis Care

2024-03-29T01:09:16+00:00October 6th, 2023|Categories: Advance Patient Choice, Innovation, Patient Stories in the News, Private Insurance Coverage, Treatment Options|

For people who live with a chronic illness, one of the most powerful words in the English language is hope. As a more than 20-year dialysis patient with end-stage renal disease, otherwise known as kidney failure, hope is a driving force in my life. My condition may never be cured, but new treatments are under development that could ease my symptoms. Every day, I hold out hope that a new, revolutionary treatment is around the corner that could help me and thousands like me live a more comfortable life. Unfortunately, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is becoming a [...]

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