Care For Dialysis Patients Improves, Medicare Ratings Show

Dialysis centers in Connecticut continue to improve their overall quality of care, with 12 facilities reaching Medicare’s highest patient-care rating and just one scoring on the low end of the scale, the latest data show. That’s an improvement from the 2014 data, when six dialysis centers in the state scored low in quality-of-care ratings. Dialysis helps those with kidney failure remove waste from the body, regulate chemicals and control blood pressure. Most often, patients have their blood removed and cleaned in a machine called a dialyzer before it’s returned to the body. Another form of dialysis uses a cleaning fluid and the stomach as a filter.

State’s Dialysis Centers Rate High, With Some Exceptions, New Data Show

Five dialysis facilities in Connecticut received low quality-of-care scores under a new Medicare rating system, including one center cited for a high death rate, while 11 facilities received the highest rating possible, federal data show. Connecticut has 45 dialysis facilities in the Medicare program, all but four of them for-profit. Of the 41 for-profit centers, the majority are owned by two chains – DaVita, which has 24, and Fresenius Medical Care, with 13. Medicare began rating dialysis facilities earlier this year on a scale of one to five stars, based on nine measures of quality of care. The measures include mortality and hospitalization rates of patients, as well as rates of hypercalcemia, catherization of more than 90 days, and the percentage of dialysis patients who had enough wastes removed from their blood during dialysis.