NICE: CKD Guidelines and Costing Template

By Anna Bennett

The National Health Service is the major provider of healthcare in the United Kingdom (socialised medicine).  Two of the NHS's divisions, The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the National Collaborating Centre for Chronic Conditions, generate guidelines and costings for CKD stages 1- 5, which they publish online. In summary the Chronic Kidney Disease guidelines cover:

• the tests doctors should use to diagnose long-term kidney problems (chronic kidney disease)
• the best treatment and care for adults diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, and when they should be referred to specialist renal services
• the general management of chronic kidney disease from a variety of causes including diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

Chronic Kidney Disease Costing Template excel spreadsheet (or what your life is worth)

(2002) Renal failure - home versus hospital haemodialysis (which is outdated)

In my last post, I mentioned that our government (USA), and other governments around the world are studying these guidelines as a way to cut costs in the American Medicare/Medicaid system.  Let's each of us take a look at what is out there, and compare to our current system and maybe we can find a middle ground, where we can maximize health for the ever growing population of people with CKD5.  Because not implementing new technology (extended dialysis using HDHD and incenter Nocturnal Dialysis) for economic reasons is unacceptable, and contrary to the inherent value of human life.

Comments

[Zach]

I know that HHD stands for Home Hemodialysis. But what does HDHHD stand for?

[Anna Bennett]

It means that sometimes I miss my own typos. HDHD High Dose Home Dialysis. I could extend to High Dose Home Hemo Dialysis and pretend that it wasn't a typo, buy NxStage uses HDHD in their literature - so I'll stick with that.