November 9th, 2009

Reports the Tribune-Review:

Amy Waterman figures she saves federal taxpayers about $1 million for every five Medicare patients she persuades to switch from dialysis to a kidney transplant.

That’s a conservative estimate for how much money Medicare saves when patients undergo kidney transplant surgeries, an option that can add years to their lives. The challenge, she said, is getting doctors and nurses to provide transplant information to the nation’s half-million patients with end-stage renal disease — at least, in a way that they understand.

“Every patient has the right to know about every option available to them,” said Waterman, a health psychologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who has studied why patients lack information about kidney transplantation. “The idea of ‘We don’t want to know about people who want this but who aren’t educated’ isn’t OK with me.”

The high national cost of dialysis — for taxpayers, insurers and patients — has become a hot-button issue as lawmakers debate ways to improve the nation’s health care system, amid questions about whether patients receive adequate access to alternatives such as kidney transplantation.

Despite medical and financial advantages to transplantation, a Tribune-Review investigation published in September found that thousands of patients have started dialysis without hearing about the option. Money is a factor: Medicare pays $18.4 billion a year for dialysis, and some kidney doctors receive money for each patient on a dialysis machine, experts said.

Find out more at the Tribune-Review.