This project seeks to achieve voluntary consensus on a set of performance measures that can be used to assess the quality of end stage renal disease (ESRD) care in the United States.
As of December 31, 2004, there were 472,099 ESRD patients in the United States with 335,963 receiving dialysis therapy. The annual adjusted mortality rate of prevalent ESRD patients receiving dialysis was 207 per 1,000 patient years. The adjusted average number of hospitalizations per year for dialysis patients was 2.02 with an average total of 14.5 days per year. The Social Security Act was amended in 1972 to extend Medicare coverage to patients with ESRD who require dialysis or kidney transplantation to survive. Total Medicare costs for ESRD were approximately $20 billion in 2004. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 required the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to develop and implement a method to measure and report the quality of renal dialysis services provided under Medicare; and CMS funded the development of Clinical Performance measures based on the National Kidney Foundation’s Dialysis Outcomes Quality Initiative Clinical Practice Guidelines. In January 2001, CMS launched the Dialysis Facility Compare public reporting tool at www.medicare.gov to provide information on nine facility characteristics and three quality measures for more than 3,500 U.S. dialysis facilities.
The project will:
This project, like all NQF activities, involves the active participation of representatives from across the spectrum of healthcare stakeholders. The project is guided by a Steering Committee. Agreement around the recommendations will be developed through NQF’s formal Consensus Development Process.
Funding for this project has been provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
For more information, contact Karen B. Pace at 202.783.1300 or info@qualityforum.org.