Assessment of Health Care Spending Among Privately Insured Patients Initiating Dialysis Care

with Paul Eliason, Ryan McDevitt, Jimmy Roberts, and Heather Wong
Published in JAMA Network Open, 2022
Open access article available here. Code used in this analysis available here. BibTeX citation available here.

Key Points:

Question: Does health care spending on patients with private insurance who have kidney failure change immediately after they initiate dialysis care?

Findings: This cohort study including 12,392 patients noted the initiation of dialysis care for privately insured patients with kidney failure was associated with significant increases in monthly spending from 5,025 to 19,654 dollars. The differences in spending between patients receiving Medicare compared with private insurance were large: patients insured by Medicare had annual mean spending of 80,509 dollars compared with 238,126 dollars for privately insured patients in their first year of dialysis.

Meaning: The findings of this study suggest that initiating dialysis is associated with large increases in health care spending for patients with kidney failure who are privately insured compared with those receiving Medicare.