The recently announced partnership of DaVita and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a great opportunity to work together with an outstanding healthcare-delivery system to improve the health of its citizens. Kidney disease is an emerging public health concern in Saudi Arabia, as it is in the United States. DaVita is honored to be able to bring our knowledge and experience to enhance what is already excellent care, as well as to continue learning how best to improve care for kidney patients. This is truly a winning situation for DaVita, for Saudi Arabia and for kidney patients.

Read on below for more details on this partnership.

Left to right: Vice Minister of Health and Health Affairs, Dr. Mansour Naser Al-Howasi, Charge d’Affaires, U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Tim Lenderking, Minister of Health, Dr. Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Rabeeah, Chief Operating Officer of DaVita HealthCare Partners, Dennis Kogod.

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Every March National Kidney Month comes around, and every March I wonder how it is that the eighth leading cause of death in this country still hasn’t achieved the public recognition and awareness level of other killers, like heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes. It seems we could save so many lives and avoid so much suffering if the general public knew even the most basic information about kidney disease and its risk factors.

But the somewhat frustrating truth is that when I talk about what I do professionally with nonmedical people, I frequently hear the question, “What’s dialysis?” People generally seem to know they have kidneys and know they’re important, but have no idea why.

There’s so much health-related information available—so many conditions clamoring for funding and recognition—that it may all be too much for the modern consumer to digest.  Frankly, there are so many ribbons representing advocacy for various disease states that no one seems to know which color goes with which illness anymore. For example, the ribbon for kidney conditions is green, but so are the ribbons for bipolar disorder, celiac disease, scoliosis, cerebral palsy and Tourette syndrome, to name a few. Read more…

A recent editorial in the New York Times described a move by the New York City public hospital system to “pay doctors based on how well they perform.” (1) Under this program, the more than 3,000 salaried doctors at the NYU School of Medicine, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Physician Affiliate Group of New York will receive no cost-of-living increases for the next three years, but there will be annual bonuses tied to meeting quality-performance goals. In the same issue of the Times there is an important critique of the pay-for-performance (P4P) approach, describing what many policy experts have said for years: “If only it worked.” (2) Op-ed columnist Bill Keller points out that the real driver of costs in our healthcare system is not overutilization of services, but rather the high unit cost of each service. Others may debate this premise, but the reality is likely a bit of both—more units and higher cost for each. As Bill Clinton said during the 2012 Democratic National Convention, “it’s math, folks,” and P4P is unlikely to change these factors significantly. Read more…

My last blog used the infamous Rodney King episode in Los Angeles as the springboard for suggesting that integrating care—physicians, hospitals and patients working together—is essential to achieve the best clinical outcomes for the chronically ill while constraining the runaway costs of healthcare. A recent article in The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/opinion/approaching-illness-as-a-team-at-the-cleveland-clinic.html?_r=0) makes it clear that this is not a theoretical concept. Physicians at one of the great healthcare organizations in the country, the Cleveland Clinic, have been forming focused teams that can mobilize to efficiently diagnose and treat a variety of illnesses, including neurological, cardiovascular, oncologic, urologic and nephrologic. Read more…

On March 3, 1991, an infamous event was caught on videotape in Los Angeles. Rodney King, a parolee and construction worker, was beaten brutally by Los Angeles police officers following a high-speed chase. After the video went viral the police officers were arrested and charged with assault and excessive force. Following the acquittal of three of the four officers on April 29, 1992, there were riots in Los Angeles, with 53 people killed and thousands injured. It was during the riots that Rodney King, the lightning rod for these events, asked, “Can we all get along?” Read more…

It seems that everywhere one looks in the healthcare media these days, there are stories about the competitive advantages of physicians using social media. For example, American Medical News recently published a very informative article entitled “Four Ways Social Media Can Improve Your Medical Practice,” which illustrates the ways in which physicians using social media as a listening tool can discover needed services, improve customer service, gather feedback on medications and compare and improve quality.

I don’t disagree that social media offers physicians a valuable listening tool that may well provide some competitive advantage. But I’m much more interested in the collaborative advantage social media offers as a community-building tool. Read more…

DaVita is entering the world of international dialysis in a big way. We are partnering with doctors in Singapore, India, China, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Germany and other countries. As we embark on this exciting adventure, we again are faced with the nagging perception that dialysis outcomes in the United States are worse than those in other parts of the world. Two recent articles provide fascinating perspectives on this important issue. Read more…

For more information on the future of Accountable Care Organizations visit www.AccountableKidneyCare.com

In this short video, Allen R. Nissenson, MD, FACP, Chief Medical Officer, DaVita, shares why taking the proper care of the kidney population is so important for Integrated Care Systems or ACOs.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this presentation are the views of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the views of DaVita, Inc. DaVita does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this presentation.