The pandemic isn’t the only crisis impacting the nursing home industry. With a growing population of seniors, kidney failure is a growing problem. In 2018, Medicare spent $49 billion on treatment for end stage renal disease, an 11% increase from a decade earlier. Let's examine a better way to do dialysis in nursing homes.
89% of patients receive hemodialysis at an outpatient clinic, requires transportation 3 days a week. For nursing home residents, transportation alone costs $411 per round trip. All that travel is time-consuming, disorienting, and confusing for elderly nursing home patients. Exposure staff and other patients in outpatient clinics put dialysis patients and their fellow residents at greater risk of infection.
Outpatient dialysis was designed for middle-aged, active patients who are otherwise healthy. Highly acute seniors often struggle to find a placement in outpatient clinics, most are not equipped to handle their needs. Check out this infographic to learn about how nursing homes can address the kidney failure crisis.
When skilled nursing facilities offer dialysis, the residents get the benefit of staying on-site, eliminating the commute time, waiting room time, and inconvenience. Our experience suggests that peritoneal dialysis can be achieved in a community-based nursing home.
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