DaVita Patient Citizens Bring Dialysis Patient Voice To Congress

EL SEGUNDO, CA (September 29, 2005) - On October 6 and 7, DaVita Patient Citizens (DPC) will bring the dialysis patient voice to Congress members. A dozen DPC dialysis patient leaders from across the country will convene in Washington DC to spread the patient message.

The focus of the October advocacy session will be to ask Congress to support the Kidney Care Quality Improvement Act of 2005 (HR 1298, S 635).

DPC’s president, dialysis patient Cathy Bridges, explains, “One element of DPC’s charter is achieving adequate dialysis-related funding. We think adequate funding is critical to our quality of care and access to care as dialysis patients. The current Medicare payment rate for dialysis isn’t enough to cover the costs of a treatment - it falls short by about $17 a treatment. The Kidney Care Quality Improvement Act would help solve this problem.”

The legislation would put in place an annual update system, so the Medicare payment rate for dialysis is adjusted each year for inflation and rising costs. Hospitals, nursing homes and all other health care segments already have an annual update system in place - dialysis is the only segment that does not.

In addition to the annual update, this legislation has other benefits for kidney patients:

• It provides counseling and education for pre-dialysis patients, to help them delay the onset of kidney failure and be healthier if/when they do need to start dialysis.
• It promotes fistulas over grafts and catheters, helping reduce costly emergency situations and hospitalizations.
• It helps ensure that patients living in rural areas have adequate access to physicians
• It provides for demonstration projects, studies and reports that will help patients

This will be the second time that DPC has been to Washington this year. In early March, a group of 14 DPC patients met Congress members and staffers. At that time, DPC’s primary focus was the nationwide policy proposed by CMS (the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) on payment for the anemia management drug EPOGEN®. DPC visited 23 Congressional offices in March. It hopes to match or exceed this number during its October visit.

DPC is the largest dialysis patient organization in America. It is a nationwide nonprofit dialysis patient organization, led by current dialysis patients, dedicated to improving dialysis patients’ quality of life through education and advocacy. Membership is open to all pre-dialysis patients, dialysis patients and their family members across the country. As of September 2005, DPC has some 9,000 members, almost all of whom are current dialysis patients. For more information, visit DPC’s website at http://www.dialysispatients.org.