Renal HS Flashcards
Besides insurance coverage, what major shifts did the affordable care act emphasize?
- Value-based purchasing
- Alternative payment models
What are the unintended consequences of “dialysis for all”?
- Olderer patients and sicker patients are routinely on dialysis
- Even if it will not really help their outcomes – no “shared decision making”
- Because it is widely available and clearly prolongs life, hard for clinicans to withold and patients to refuse
- Hemodialysis incentivized (over peritoneal)
- Most expensive treatment
- Covered by medicare
- -> Many for-profit dialysis centers (a big business)
What kind of insurance covers dialysis?
Anyone with ESRD qualifies for medicare, and medicare covers dialysis
ESRD is the only disease that can qualify a person for medicare coverage
However, for patients with private insurance, their insurance is responsible for the first 30 months of dialysis costs until they are medicare eligible
What are balancing measures?
Efforts to ensure that changes do not have unintended consequences
How is dialysis different in other countries vs. the United States?
Other countries (like South Africa) have more stringent requirements on who qualifies for dialysis
(Age, BMI, HIV negative, HepB negative, no other “negative factors”)
=> There are fewer people on dialysis in South Africa than in America (although I don’t see this being very equitable)
Hong Kong has a “peritoneal dialysis first” policy - this helps to reduce costs
What are the fluid intake guidelines for patients with CKD?
There are no specific guidelines, but it is generally recommended that patients don’t drink excessive fluids
Note: Many patients with CKD also have heart failure - limit fluids to 1.5 to 2 L/day in patients with heart failure
Give some examples of health care outcomes
- Survival
- Ex: Mortality benefit after recieving the flu vaccine
- Improved functional capabilities
- Reduction of pain and suffering
- Ability to engage in normal life
- Ex: number of days until a patient can walk after hip surgery
Which reimbursement system would incentivize physicians to accept patints that are healthier to minimize time spent and services rendered and to maximize the amount they receive per patient?
Capitation
What reimbursment system payes a certain amount based on a patient’s diagnosis?
Payment by episode of illness
What is the leading cause of mortality in patients with CKD?
Cardiovascular disease
- Increased phosphorous can contribute
- -> Calcification, FGF-23 release
- -> Cardiovascular remodeling
What are “professional” healthcare services?
What kind of insurance covers these services?
- Services provided by a healthcare professional –
- Office visits, consults, surgeon’s fee, etc.
- Covered by Medicare Part B or private insurance
Which organization convenes to develop a standard patient outcome measurement set?
Why is this important?
International Consortioum of Health Outcome Measures (ICHOM)
This makes implementing these measure sets easier, because individual phsyicians and hospitals don’t have to sort through all of the potential tools that they might use - ICHOM has already met and decided upon the best measure sets to used for each patient population/condition
African Americans represent 13.2% of the US population, yet constitute more than ____% of all patients in the US receiving dialysis for ESKD
African Americans represent 13.2% of the US population, yet constitute more than 35% of all patients in the US receiving dialysis for ESKD
What are the challenges of using PROMs to improve health outcomes?
Data is not easy to maintain and integrate
- Requires longer contact time post-treatment
- Can be burdensome and time-consuming
What drug improved kidney transplant outcomes in the 1980’s?
Cyclosporin
An immunosuppressant (calcineurin inhibitor)
Healthcare represents ____% of the United States GDP
Healthcare represents 28% of the United States GDP
For patients with established end stage renal disease, the most effective form of renal replacement therapy is:
- Daily, home hemodialysis
- Peritoneal dialysis
- Deceased donor kidney transplant
- Living, incompatible kidney transplant
- Living, compatible kidney transplant
e. Living, compatible kidney transplant
What is kidney paired donation?
“Kidney exchange”
An incompatible donor donates to the pool, in return for a different living donor’s kidney (if their desired recipient is also incompatible with their donor)
All transplants must occur simultaneoulsy (but they do not have to take place at the same center)
This allows for more well-matched living donor transplants
Why does low birth weight correlate with increased risk of developing CKD?
Low birth weight
= Smaller kidneys
= Reduced nephron number
= Mismatch between kidney capacity adn adult excretory load
How are kidney allografts monitored?
Biopsy
- More invasive, but can more accurately detect subclinical injury/rejection
- Important to monitor in order to ensure proper dose of immunosuppressants
- Too much = nephrotoxicity, infection risk
- Too little = rejection
- Blood-based test for subacute clinical rejection is being developed
What are “bundled payments?”
How do they compare to “fee for service?”
Bundled payments = an alternative payment model built around defined episodes of care
A single case rate or target price makes the providers financially accounable for all services in the specified time frame
Providers will be reimbursed a fixed amount - this incentivizes the proiver to ensure high-quality, cost-effective care
What disparities may exist in the development of precision medicine may exist in CKD?
The human reference genome that is used to guide precision medicine does not contain all ancestral genomes and variations in equal representation
What is the inheritance pattern of the APOL1 G1 and G2 alleles?
Autosomal recessive w/incomplete penetranc
What is the prevalence of CKD?
>30 million Americans have CKD
(14% of the population)
Which of the following is not required by the FDA to be placed on nutrition labels?
a. Serving size
b. Sodium content in mg
c. Saturated fat
d. Phosphorus content
d. Phosphorus content
What is a racial difference in health?
Give examples
Clinical, biological, genetic, or epigenetic factors associated with disease risk or outcome
Not caused by social factors that vary among population groups
- Preference to forego surgery for cultural reasons
- Genetic predisposition for progression of CKD
- Ex: APOL1 mutation in African Americans makes progression to ESRD more likely in patients with CKD
For-profit dialysis patients have a _____% higher mortality rate than patients receiving dialysis from centers that were not for-profit
For-profit dialysis patients have a 13% higher mortality rate than patients receiving dialysis from centers that were not for-profit
How do you convert from sodium to the approximate salt equivalent?
Salt = sodium * 2.5
Half the salt molecule is sodium, it’s not half the weight
(40% is sodium, 60% is chloride)
ESRD expenditures account for _____% of Medicare budget
ESRD patients account for _____% of Medicare beneficiaries
ESRD expenditures account for 7% of Medicare budget
ESRD patients account for <1% of Medicare beneficiaries
Compare the cost of hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, and transplant over the course of a year
Hemodialysis = most expensive
Peritoneal dialysis
Transplant = least expensive
What is the recommendation for protein intake in patients with CKD?
Why?
Limit protein intake
Excess protein can lead to accumulation of uremic toxins
This can accelerate decline in renal function and progression of CKD
However, this can lead to lean body mass and malnutrition, so don’t go overboard
What are the relevant racial disparities in CKD?
- Healthare access
- Decreased access to preventative care
- -> Decreased referrals to nephrology
- Access to kidney transplant
- Less likely to…
- Be identified as a transplant candidate
- Receive transplant evaluation referral
- Be placed on the waiting list for deceased donor kidneys
- Less likely to…
- Living and working ocnditions
- Worse dialysis facilities
- More toxic waste sites
- Fewer walkable areas
- More food deserts
What are the key differences between episode-based payment models and population-based payment models?
- Episode-based
- Centered around a “triggering event”
- Duration depends on the triggering event, but is generally meant to just manage that event
- Population-based = ACO
- Aimed at managing the care of an entire population
- Long-term
Describe global payment as a reimbursement system
A fixed payment is made for all services for a specified period of time
Ex: The Veteran’s Health Administration, Department of Defense, and Kaiser Permanente hospitals are paid via global budgets
- Every service performed on every patient during a year is aggregated into a single payment
What defines an “episode of care?”
An episode of care is defined by a
- Treatement and/or condition…
- For a specified period of time both before and after the triggering event
- By a set of care providers and services rendered within the episode
Example: hip replacement
What is the International Consortioum of Health Outcome Measures (ICHOM)?
A non-profit organization that aims to accelerate teh use of patient outcome measurement in healthcare
They get patients and physicians together to develop standard patient outcome measurement sets
This allows for the identification of measure sets that can be used for improvement, without getting lost in the weeds
Measure sets have been developed to measure otcomes from strokes, acute renal failure, prolonged ventilation, etc
What are “facility” healthcare services?
What kind of insurance covers these services?
- Anything where a “facility” needs to be used
- Hospital stays, skilled nursing stays, outpatient surgery
- Covered by Medicare Part A or private insurance