Working for Transparency and Accountability for Dialysis Patients and Taxpayers

This week proved that watchdogs and congressional oversight can make a positive difference.   Medicare officials agreed to make public data that’s been collected about the performance of kidney dialysis clinics.  Investigative reporting by ProPublica revealed lax inspections and unsafe and unsanitary treatment.

Last December, I asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services what the agency is doing to make sure the public has access to meaningful information about the quality of dialysis care and to hold the clinics accountable.  Taxpayers pay for most dialysis treatments, through Medicare, under a special entitlement created nearly 40 years ago, at a cost of more than $20 billion a year.  Even so, the government has withheld from patients, and the public generally, critical data about dialysis clinic performance.

Now that information will be available directly from the source.  Ultimately, it should be online in an easily searchable format.  More scrutiny and transparency are good for consumers.  But it shouldn’t take an investigative media expose and pressure from Congress to make these improvements happen.  Ensuring decent care at dialysis facilities should be standard operating procedure for Medicare officials.  Patients deserve it, and the taxpayers are paying for it.