Kidney Dialysis Centers NAICS 621492

May 15, 2025 - Living Kidney Donation, Medical Advances Help Patients Avoid Dialysis

• Kidneys from living donors are allowing many people with advanced kidney disease to receive transplants before their kidneys deteriorate so much that they need dialysis, according to researchers at the Mayo Clinic. Demand for dialysis may decrease if more transplants are performed earlier. Patients typically become candidates for a kidney transplant when their kidney function drops below 20%. Dialysis usually starts when function reaches around 10%. If you start thinking about transplantation at this time, it is often too late, and you will be on dialysis awhile, according to Mayo Clinic, transplant surgeon Dr. Mikel Prieto. "So that's the sweet spot: transplant between 20% and 10% of kidney function. That's what we call preemptive transplantation," Dr. Prieto says. "That's what we try to do here at Mayo. If we time things right, we can do the transplant and avoid dialysis altogether."
• Chronic Kidney Disease is on trend to become the fifth leading cause of death worldwide by 2050, according to the Medical Advisory Council of the Global Patient Alliance for Kidney Health. The disease has been trending upwards as a cause of death for years, moving up from ninth in 2019 and 18th in 1990. The absence of symptoms until the disease is well advanced can mean that kidney disease is often not diagnosed until it’s too late to avoid kidney failure. Up to 90% of kidney function can be lost without symptoms, meaning diagnosis is often too late.

• Fewer patients starting dialysis are enrolling in Medicare since the introduction of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2014 and are instead opting for private insurance, according to a study published in in JAMA Health Forum. The ACA expanded access to private insurance by preventing plans from denying coverage because of preexisting conditions, promoting state insurance exchanges, and relaxing special enrollment periods. “Dialysis expenditures for privately insurance patients were at least twice as high as patients with Medicaid who enrolled in Medicare after dialysis initiation and several times higher for patients with Medicaid who did not enroll in Medicare,” the investigators note. “This may lead to unnecessarily high overall societal costs and inequitable access to care for some patients, which ultimately affects payers, patients, and overall consumers (ie, overall consumer health care insurance premiums are not limited to patients with ESKD).”
• Kidney dialysis center industry employment and average wages for nonsupervisory employees increased slightly during the first three months of 2025, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Kidney dialysis industry sales are forecast to increase at a 5.75% compounded annual rate from 2025 to 2029, faster than the growth of the overall economy, according to Inforum and the Interindustry Economic Research Fund, Inc.