Published by AL.com
Miles K. Williams
March 6, 2014

Medicare cuts, issued recently and put into effect this year by the administration, will drastically cut funding for kidney dialysis necessary for the survival of hundreds of thousands of kidney failure patients across the country and here in Birmingham – reducing payments for this life-saving therapy by 12 percent or $30 per dialysis treatment.

As an administrator at DaVita’s Magic City Dialysis Center, I, the care giving team and patients shared our concerns about these cuts with Congresswoman Terri Sewell who visited our facility recently to learn more about quality kidney care, and the lives of the 75 patients we care for every day.

Dialysis is a lifeline for our kidney failure patients — more than 80 percent of whom rely heavily on Medicare to help pay for their dialysis treatments, medications, and additional services. Medicare already falls short of covering the full cost of patients’ treatments and while the cuts will be phased in over 4 years, they are still expected to further strip scarce resources out of the dialysis program.

It is critical that Congress intervene before the full cuts are implemented so I hope readers feel compelled to contact the Congresswoman to ask for her support.

Miles K. Williams is the Facility Administrator at DaVita Magic City Dialysis in Birmingham. His email is miles.williams@davita.com.

See the original article here.