Kidney professionals, patients, and caregivers gathered in Baltimore to launch the “Home Dialysis Quality Initiative,” an effort to discover ways to remove barriers to home dialysis during the KDOQI Home Dialysis Conference.

 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issued a proposed rule, Modernizing Part D and Medicare Advantage to Lower Drug Prices and Reduce Out-of-Pocket Expenses, which will make it more difficult for some transplant recipients to access the drugs they need to prevent organ rejection.

Governor Cuomo signed into law the New York Living Donor Protection Act.  This law, similar to the proposed federal Living Donor Protection Act, protects living organ donors from health, medical and life insurance discrimination based upon their status as an organ donor, as well as other protections for living organ donors.

A newly-published journal report focused on decreasing the number of kidneys discarded aims to address some of the key factors and provides the first systematic nationwide approach to reducing kidney discards.