The Problem

Almost One Million Americans Have End-Stage Kidney Disease (ESKD)

The waitlist is growing faster than the number of individuals receiving a transplant.

Medicare spending on kidney disease is very high and rising. Here are the facts.

Medicare spends more than $130 billion (24% of overall spending) on patients with kidney disease, and ESKD, which affects 1% of Medicare beneficiaries, accounts for 7% of total spend.

The NIH estimates that in 2021, 13.5% of the approximately 23.9 million Medicare beneficiaries over 66 years old had a diagnosis of Chronic Kidney Disease (including ESKD). This accounts for nearly one-quarter (24.1%) of total Medicare spending – an estimated $76.8 billion dollars.

Within that group, approximately two thirds of the cost ($52.3B in 2021) was spent on care for ESKD beneficiaries.

Despite proven safety for living donation, rates have stagnated, if not declined, over the past 20 years.

Data from the Organ Procurement Transplant Network (OPTN), created by Congress to facilitate more transplants, document that over the past twenty years living donation has remained stagnated.

One reason for this stagnation? Medicare regulations work against advancing living donation.

The process for donors and recipients can be expensive and complex. As a result, for every 100 potential living donors who volunteer and complete the initial screening questionnaire, only seven may make it to donation.

Increasing the number of kidney transplants will have a profound impact on increasing the quality of life and survival of patients while leading to dramatic cost savings for Medicare.

The Challenge

Americans with End Stage Kidney Disease (ESKD) have two options: Dialysis, which is an expensive and difficult treatment, or a kidney transplant.

But it’s not that simple…in America, there is a significant shortage of kidneys available for transplant. Despite tens of thousands of living donors willing to donate, Medicare has not leveraged its statutory and regulatory authority to expand living kidney donation.

With only 27,000 kidney donations each year through deceased or living donors, too many individuals remain on the waitlist. Nearly 100,000 Americans are waiting for help with new names added to the list annually. This is where Kidney Transplant Collaborative is here to help.