CMS is committed to providing consumers with information to empower them to make more informed decisions regarding their health care. The Dialysis Facility Compare (DFC) on www.medicare.gov allows consumers to review and compare facility characteristics and quality information on all Medicare approved dialysis facilities in the United States. This information can help consumers, especially dialysis patients, choose a dialysis facility that meets their needs and/or stimulate patients to discuss this information with their dialysis care giver. Another goal of the website is to drive quality improvement efforts by the dialysis facilities by publicly reporting facility-specific information.
The Balanced Budget Act (BBA) of 1997 required the Secretary of Health and Human Services to measure and report the quality of renal dialysis services provided under the Medicare program. Since 1995, CMS has been reporting dialysis care quality information at the national and regional level through its ESRD Clinical Performance Measures (CPM) Project and ESRD Core Indicators Project. However, at the time of the BBA, the system was not designed for reporting at the dialysis facility-specific level.
In 1999, CMS funded the development of dialysis facility-specific measures that could be released in reports to the public for their use in making dialysis treatment choices. An extensive public process was used to select the first set of measures to be publicly reported. The information that was selected included certain facility characteristics as well as measures of quality of care related to dialysis patient care processes and/or outcomes.
In January 2001, the DFC tool was launched on www.medicare.gov providing information on nine facility characteristics and three quality measures on over 3,500 dialysis facilities in the United States.
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Page Last Modified: 12/14/2005 10:40:00 AM
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