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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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…

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…