Advance Patient Choice Archives - Page 11 of 13

Kidney Care Bill Introduced in U.S. House of Representatives
Gallery

Kidney Care Bill Introduced in U.S. House of Representatives

Hannah Bracamonte2024-03-29T02:08:05+00:00June 30th, 2014|Categories: Article, Care Coordination, Medicare Advantage, Treatment Options|

Congressmen John Lewis (D-GA) and Tom Marino (R-PA) have introduced the Chronic Kidney Disease Improvement in Research and Treatment Act in the U.S. House of Representatives. Lewis and Marino are leaders on the Congressional Kidney Caucus and have been staunch supporters of dialysis patients over the years. This bill seeks to advance several proactive kidney care policy initiatives and provides a vehicle for educating Members of Congress and the public about the issues facing kidney disease patients and the kidney community as a whole. The bill would: Improve understanding of kidney disease: The legislation seeks to identify the gaps in critical [...]

Dialysis Reimbursements Stabilized by Protecting Access to Medicare Act

Hannah Bracamonte2024-03-29T02:08:06+00:00April 2nd, 2014|Categories: Article, Dialysis Funding, Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage|

This week President Obama signed the Protecting Access to Medicare Act, which contained some provisions favorable to dialysis patients. The primary purpose of the legislation was to stabilize Medicare payments to physicians, but Congress also used the opportunity to stabilize reimbursements to dialysis facilities. A large cut that had been scheduled to take effect in 2016 has been replaced by smaller, fixed-amount cuts that afford providers more certainty about revenues in coming years. This new payment formula will encourage providers to renew expiring leases on dialysis facilities and continue to invest in improved kidney care infrastructure. Another provision further delays addition [...]

DPC Urges Medicare Agency to Withdraw Proposal That Could Weaken Protections for Transplant Patients

Hannah Bracamonte2024-03-29T02:08:06+00:00March 6th, 2014|Categories: Access to Transplant, Article, Comment Letter, Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage, Improve Access to Care|

Dialysis Patient Citizens (DPC) weighed in against a Medicare proposal that would complicate some transplant patients’ access to immunosuppressive drugs. Medicare Part D, like other private health plans, uses drug formularies to keep down costs. Formularies favor certain drugs over others in exchange for discounts. Patients are encouraged to ask their doctors to first prescribe medications on the formulary to take advantage of lower co-pays. Often a patient’s condition can be addressed by a drug on the formulary, but many transplant patients find that “first-line” immunosuppressive treatments aren’t effective or have serious side-effects. For this reason, DPC told CMS: “Immunosuppressive [...]

DPC Expresses Concerns Regarding Changes to the Medicare Advantage and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Programs

Hannah Bracamonte2024-03-29T02:08:06+00:00March 5th, 2014|Categories: Access to Transplant, Comment Letter, Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage, Medicare Advantage|

Kidney Community Urges Senate to Contact CMS Regarding Removing Immunosuppressive Protected Class Status

Hannah Bracamonte2024-03-29T02:08:07+00:00February 18th, 2014|Categories: Access to Transplant, Comment Letter, Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage|

We Need to Hear From You!

Hannah Bracamonte2024-03-29T02:08:07+00:00February 7th, 2014|Categories: Article, Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage, Increase Quality of Care, Treatment Options|

DPC is currently working on two initiatives that require your input! First, the National Quality Forum is conducting a study of "Person-Centered Care" and is looking for patient input. DPC has volunteered to collect patient viewpoints on this subject, and we are inviting our members and other dialysis patients to share your experience with and insights into the care you've received. The National Quality Forum is an organization that endorses the standardized healthcare performance measures that are used by Medicare and other insurers to monitor quality. Its goal in this project is to figure out how to assess whether care is person-centered, which may [...]

Giving Tuesday: What Can We as Dialysis Patients Give?

Hannah Bracamonte2024-03-29T02:08:07+00:00December 6th, 2013|Categories: Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage, Patient's Voice, What is Kidney Disease?|Tags: Health Insurance Exchange|

By James Myers, DPC Patient Ambassador On the website for the Polycystic Kidney Foundation, there is an announcement about Giving Tuesday, December 3rd, 2013. It says you can give one of three ways: your voice, your time or your dollars. As a dialysis patient, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any money. But two things that I have a lot of are voice and time, and I am more than happy to lend those to the cause of defeating PKD. I can honestly say that having an invisible fatal illness has colored every decision that I have [...]

HOPE Act Signed Into Law

Hannah Bracamonte2024-03-29T02:08:07+00:00December 1st, 2013|Categories: Access to Transplant, Article|Tags: HIV Positive Organ Transplantation|

After tireless efforts by DPC and others in the kidney community, President Obama signed the HIV Organ Policy Equity (HOPE) Act into law on November 21, 2013. The HOPE Act was introduced with strong bipartisan support in the House of Representatives by Rep. Lois Capps and Rep. Andy Harris and in the Senate by Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Tom Coburn. The HOPE Act legalizes the research of transplanting HIV positive organs into HIV positive recipients. If this research proves this practice to be effective, the organ supply in the United States could increase by 500 organs per year. Many of these organs [...]

Patient Outcry Draws a Two-Year Reprieve From Dialysis Cuts
Gallery

Patient Outcry Draws a Two-Year Reprieve From Dialysis Cuts

Hannah Bracamonte2024-03-29T02:08:08+00:00December 1st, 2013|Categories: Article, Care Coordination, Dialysis Funding, Treatment Options|

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) acknowledged patient concerns by delaying for two years its planned cut to the Medicare End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) program. The Medicare agency’s decision didn’t give dialysis patients everything we asked for, but it does mean that nearly $2 billion slated to be cut from kidney care in 2014 and 2015 will remain available to treat patients. However, it also means that patient advocates must be vigilant for any signs that access to care is shrinking as providers anticipate cuts now scheduled to take effect in 2016. The Medicare ruling came in the [...]

Has the ACA Expanded Medicare’s Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage for Kidney Transplant Recipients?

Hannah Bracamonte2024-03-29T02:08:08+00:00November 18th, 2013|Categories: Immunosuppressive Drug Coverage, Patient's Voice|

By Jim Myers, DPC Patient Ambassador. I had a conversation with my doctor last week. (My nephrologist, Dr. Vavilala, we call him Dr. V). He asked me if I had heard anything during my last trip to Washington, D.C. about an extension of coverage through the ACA to kidney transplant patients of the immunosuppressive drug coverage beyond the 36 month period that currently exists. This rang a bell in the back of my brain, so I decided to check it out. Every transplant patient or transplant candidate knows the current status of the law. If you are a kidney transplant [...]

Dialysis Patient Citizens

Recent News