CVS Health delves deeper into monitoring, providing care for chronic diseases
CVS Health wants to help improve patient outcomes and control costs for patients with chronic kidney disease.
The company is launching a new initiative that will focus on early identification of kidney disease and an expanded home dialysis offering designed to help optimize care and contain costs for patients with chronic kidney disease. The program, which includes the introduction of new home hemodialysis technology, positions the company to positively disrupt and reshape the kidney care space, CVH Health said.
“In dialysis today, there is an enormous unmet medical need with high levels of mortality, frequent hospitalizations and poor quality of life for affected patients,” said Alan Lotvin, M.D., executive VP and head of CVS Specialty. “As we explored this area it became clear that our enterprise assets from our experience with complex patient home care through Coram, the breadth of our chronic disease management capabilities with CVS Specialty and Accordant, and our deep payer relationships at CVS Caremark will enable us to create a unique value proposition to help reshape dialysis treatment.”
The company will approach the new program in stages, with the initial efforts focused on early identification and patient education, followed by the development of a comprehensive home dialysis program. As part of the program, CVS Health will begin a clinical trial to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of a new hemodialysis device that it plans to submit to the FDA to get market clearance.
“The device has been designed with features intended to make home hemodialysis simple and safe for patients, in order to facilitate longer, more frequent treatments,” CVS Health stated. “In published clinical research, longer, more frequent hemodialysis treatments lead to better outcomes in appropriate patient populations.”
Roughly 700,000 Americans have end-stage renal disease, and roughly half a million of them are on active dialysis, with 120,000 new cases diagnosed annually. In addition to the cost burden associated with the illness — it costs Medicare nearly $65 billion a year and another $34 billion related to patient care — its outcomes lag. Mortality rates for in-center dialysis patients are 10 times higher than the general Medicare population.
“While in-center dialysis clinics are currently the most common choice for hemodialysis treatment, published clinical research has shown improved cardiac health, metabolic control, and survival for patients who are treated with longer, more frequent dialysis treatments,” said CVS Specialty chief medical officer Bruce Culleton. “This treatment paradigm is best delivered in the convenience of a patient’s home. CVS Health is uniquely positioned to build a solution that will enable us to identify and intervene earlier with patients to optimize the management of chronic kidney disease, while at the same time making home dialysis therapies a real option for more patients.”
The company is launching a new initiative that will focus on early identification of kidney disease and an expanded home dialysis offering designed to help optimize care and contain costs for patients with chronic kidney disease. The program, which includes the introduction of new home hemodialysis technology, positions the company to positively disrupt and reshape the kidney care space, CVH Health said.
“In dialysis today, there is an enormous unmet medical need with high levels of mortality, frequent hospitalizations and poor quality of life for affected patients,” said Alan Lotvin, M.D., executive VP and head of CVS Specialty. “As we explored this area it became clear that our enterprise assets from our experience with complex patient home care through Coram, the breadth of our chronic disease management capabilities with CVS Specialty and Accordant, and our deep payer relationships at CVS Caremark will enable us to create a unique value proposition to help reshape dialysis treatment.”
The company will approach the new program in stages, with the initial efforts focused on early identification and patient education, followed by the development of a comprehensive home dialysis program. As part of the program, CVS Health will begin a clinical trial to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of a new hemodialysis device that it plans to submit to the FDA to get market clearance.
“The device has been designed with features intended to make home hemodialysis simple and safe for patients, in order to facilitate longer, more frequent treatments,” CVS Health stated. “In published clinical research, longer, more frequent hemodialysis treatments lead to better outcomes in appropriate patient populations.”
Roughly 700,000 Americans have end-stage renal disease, and roughly half a million of them are on active dialysis, with 120,000 new cases diagnosed annually. In addition to the cost burden associated with the illness — it costs Medicare nearly $65 billion a year and another $34 billion related to patient care — its outcomes lag. Mortality rates for in-center dialysis patients are 10 times higher than the general Medicare population.
“While in-center dialysis clinics are currently the most common choice for hemodialysis treatment, published clinical research has shown improved cardiac health, metabolic control, and survival for patients who are treated with longer, more frequent dialysis treatments,” said CVS Specialty chief medical officer Bruce Culleton. “This treatment paradigm is best delivered in the convenience of a patient’s home. CVS Health is uniquely positioned to build a solution that will enable us to identify and intervene earlier with patients to optimize the management of chronic kidney disease, while at the same time making home dialysis therapies a real option for more patients.”