Every year, DaVita Kidney Care strives to improve clinical outcomes for our patients by evaluating the way nephrologists and dialysis caregivers approach patient care. Since 2000, we have succeeded in improving outcomes in specific areas relating to infection control, improved catheter rates, increased use of fistulas, better dialysis adequacy and year-over-year decreased mortality rates.[1] The end result of these improvements in care is increased overall quality of life for our patients. Read more…

DaVita Kidney Care’s mission is to be the Provider and Partner of Choice. To achieve this mission, we are continually recruiting top clinical leaders in nephrology research and clinical practice to join the DaVita Village. I am proud to announce that we have the honor of welcoming Martin Schreiber, M.D. to our physician leadership team as the vice president of clinical affairs for DaVita home dialysis and a member of the Office of the Chief Medical Officer. I have personally known Marty for more than 20 years and have seen how his commitment to clinical excellence has been a driving force throughout his nephrology career. He has devoted his life to improving the quality of care and quality of life for patients with chronic kidney disease, and is an internationally recognized clinician, researcher and advocate for home dialysis.

I am delighted to welcome Marty to the DaVita Village. My colleagues and I are excited to see such an exceptional physician have the opportunity to help lead the charge in delivering patient-centric care, enhancing patient choice and moving up the DaVita Patient-Focused Quality Pyramid.

In October 1978, after a year on the faculty at UCLA, I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on peritoneal dialysis (PD) at the Western Dialysis and Transplant Society’s (WDTS) Ninth Annual Meeting at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu. During my training in nephrology at Northwestern University in Chicago (and my internship and residency at Michael Reese Hospital in that same city) I had become a strong advocate for PD. At that time I was placing Tenckhoff catheters at the bedside and prescribing either manual PD using bottled dialysate, or PD using the Baxter Physio-Control system, a proportioning device. I learned at the side of one of the great unsung leaders in dialysis therapy (then working at Lakeside VA Hospital), Dr. Peter Ivanovich—he had a deep passion for the care of patients but also understood the value in clinicians and clinical researchers collaborating with industry to guide research and development. Peter instilled in me many of the values that I have held throughout my career, and I remain grateful to him for that and am thrilled that he is still at it, now at Northwestern, helping drive innovation for kidney patients.

Read more…