Bringing Care to Patients: Patient-Centered Medical Home for Kidney Disease

Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD), have unique and complex care needs associated with renal disease and common comorbidities (e.g., diabetes, hypertension), and under the current care model, receive fragmented care from multiple providers at multiple locations. ESRD patients typically spend three to five hours undergoing dialysis three days a week. Scheduling and traveling to other appointments are difficult to manage, increase patient and caregiver burden, and reduce patients' quality of life. These challenges keep many ESRD patients from receiving care for other conditions outside of the dialysis setting, resulting in higher rates of complications, and emergent healthcare use. The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model has been proposed as a solution to patients with complex needs such as those with ESRD. The purpose of this project is to compare a PCMH model of care with the usual care of ESRD patients and their caregivers. We propose to enhance the usual care team for ESRD patients by providing a primary care doctor in the context of regularly scheduled dialysis sessions and by adding community health workers to help support patients and their caregivers. Patient and family stakeholders and care team members will assist in the design and refinement of the PCMH model. We plan to implement this model at the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System (UIHS) dialysis center and a local Fresenius Medical Care dialysis center. Patients receiving dialysis at participating centers will receive an initial comprehensive care visit followed by ongoing care from a multispecialty provider team during the patients' regularly scheduled dialysis visits. Each patient's care team will include a kidney doctor, a primary care doctor, a nurse coordinator, a dialysis nurse, a dietician, a pharmacist, a social worker, and a community health worker. The primary care doctor will be available in the dialysis clinic to provide general and preventive care to the patient before or after dialysis sessions. This doctor would also coordinate care with other specialists/clinicians on the patient's care team. The trained, bilingual (English/Spanish) community health worker will assist with making and rescheduling appointments, obtaining transportation, and reinforcing education components. We expect that this approach will increase patient access to care for other conditions and will increase care coordination and communication among members of the patient's care team. These improvements could potentially increase the likelihood of preventing complications or identifying problems earlier and allow for a more successful treatment. We expect that this enhanced care team will reduce emergency room visits and hospitalizations for dialysis patients. In addition, we anticipate that the addition of community health workers to the clinical team will help support and educate patients and their caregivers and as a result, patient quality of life will improve and caregiver burden may be reduced.