Summary: The oversight of end-stage renal disease (ESRD) facilities needs improvement. Increasing the budget of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) for inspecting ESRD facilities should help improve oversight, as would putting some teeth into the enforcement process. One way to give facilities more incentives to stay in compliance with Medicare reimbursement policies would be to have available the kinds of monetary penalties that can be used when nursing homes are found to have severe or repeated serious deficiencies. For example, HCFA can fine nursing homes, and the fines are not forgiven when the facility corrects its problems. Another way to strengthen oversight would be for state agencies and ESRD's networks to share information on complaints and known quality-of-care problems at specific facilities. This would help target inspection resources where they are most needed. HCFA's efforts to use available outcome data for targeting its survey efforts might also eventually help in this regard, but more testing and evaluation are needed to help ensure that the data used are sufficient to predict noncompliance with Medicare's quality standards. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Medicare Quality of Care: Oversight of Kidney Dialysis Facilities Needs Improvement, by William J. Scanlon, Director of Health Financing and Public Health Issues, before the Senate Special Committee on Aging. GAO/T-HEHS-00-136, June 26 (7 pages).
