Not surprisingly, many patients undergoing care for chronic kidney disease often experience an emotional toll along with their physical symptoms. The emotional health of patients is often overlooked by their care teams, though they are either unaware patients are experiencing these issues or are focused entirely on maintaining patients’ physical health.
Here is your latest kidney care news for September 2018.
End stage renal disease is increasing by five percent per year in the United States, and in 2014 over 100,000 people began treatment for ESRD. As the amount of ESRD patients increase, so does the need for dialysis clinics to help treat them.
Attracting these new ESRD patients to your dialysis clinic and retaining the ones you have has several benefits. Lower patient turnover has been associated with increased profitability, happier staff and lowered risk of patient treatment errors.
But attracting and retaining patients is often easier said than done. Here are a few tips for attracting and retaining patients to your dialysis center.
American Renal Associates Reports 10 Percent Increase in Operating Revenues in Q1
Bill restricting third-party premium payment for patients with ESRD wins California Senate committee approval
The California Senate Committee on Health recently approved the California SB 1156 bill, sponsored by Sen. Connie Leyva. SB 1156 prevents third-party organizations, such as the American Kidney Fund, from helping patients on dialysis pay for more expensive, commercial health plan premiums.
Most hemodialysis patients aren’t like Lori Clark. While most patients take the usual steps to stay healthy and attend their hemodialysis appointments, Lori goes a step further — she investigates and experiments based on what she learns at her dialysis sessions.
While that might seem odd, doing so has helped her take better care of her vascular access. She couldn’t do it, however, without the help of Transonic’s HD03 monitor, which her clinic uses to monitor its patients’ vascular access flow.
You may think that improving treatment for your dialysis patients is solely your responsibility — but the patient experience is a two-way street. And in a field where nurse burnout is a high risk and bloodstream infections are the leading cause of patient hospitalization, it pays to take a closer look at how your dialysis patients can become more empowered to manage their healthcare.
The first step to opening up the road is changing the way you see your patients. Kidney patient advocate David Rosenbloom challenges the assumption that dialysis patients are all victims receiving end-of-life care:
In Patients with Type 2 Diabetes, BMI can be a Predictor of Developing ESRD
After a five year follow up, researchers found 5.8 percent of patients classified as obesity grade two and 7.8 percent of patients classified as obesity grade three had developed a “major renal event” compared to 4.2 percent of patients classified as normal weight. They also found: “Every additional unit of BMI over 25 kg/m2 increased the risk of major renal events by 4 (1-6)%.”
Source: Nephrology News & Issues
Researchers found that CKD patients may get some medicinal benefits from consuming caffeine. They found that those who consumed higher amounts of caffeine—between 206.5 to 1,378.5 milligrams daily—cut their mortality risk by nearly a quarter compared to those who consumed lower amounts.
