Too often, we forget about the personal and mental health struggles facing patients with serious medical illnesses. This is especially true for dialysis patients, who often have to upend their lives to receive the treatments they need.
I’ve experienced this personally when after three years of balancing dialysis treatments and doctor’s appointments, I was forced to close a successful restaurant that I had built from the ground up. What followed were years of struggle in order to manage my treatments and ensure that I was receiving the best care possible. But it doesn’t have to be this way, and the lives of patients with kidney disease can be improved with better care coordination.
A bill called the BETTER Kidney Care Act would help doctors to coordinate more effectively and provide useful benefits that many dialysis patients on Medicare can’t currently receive. That’s why I am hoping that Representative Cindy Axne will support this bill as it moves through Congress.
As health concerns remain top-of-mind for patients everywhere given the spread of the coronavirus, it is crucial we do everything to make things easier. With the BETTER Kidney Care Act, we will have a chance to do that for dialysis patients across the United States.
Mark Johnson
