One in seven American adults are impacted by chronic kidney disease (CKD), which may cause the kidneys to fail over time if untreated. Patients who experience kidney failure need a kidney transplant or dialysis treatment to live. This disease disproportionately affects communities of color, and the disparity grows as patients reach end stage kidney disease.
Fortunately, access to high-quality care in outpatient dialysis centers is largely equitable. This is true as an industry and specifically for DaVita’s more than 2,800 outpatient centers, where clinical metrics such as hospitalizations, readmissions and infection rates are largely equitable across patient demographics, including socio-economic status, race, gender and geography.
While this progress is encouraging, our work is far from complete.
Our goal is to facilitate equity at every step of the kidney care journey. Disparities remain within CKD treatment, home dialysis, transplant and end-of-life care.
Let’s focus on home dialysis as an example.
Although the choice of home dialysis may provide certain clinical and quality-of-life benefits for many patients, white dialysis patients are nearly twice as likely to choose home treatment compared to Black or Hispanic patients.
Today, 15% of DaVita patients choose to treat at home. By 2025, we have a bold goal to help more patients treat at home and to nearly double the current industry average.