Reem Daloul, MD
Second year fellow Reem Daloul, MD, recently presented a poster at the Annual Dialysis Conference, February 27-March 2 in Seattle, Washington. The poster, entitled “Physician Reimbursement for In-Center Hemodialysis is Greater Than for Peritoneal or Home Hemodialysis,” identified financial disincentives for nephrologists to provide home renal replacement therapies for patients. One reason for this finding is that the existing hemodialysis infrastructure is so dominant that it is more costly to switch to home modalities, and more profitable to maintain current practice patterns. Daloul, her coauthor Jodean Baldauf and her mentor Brent Miller, MD, hypothesize that lower payments to physicians for management of home dialysis therapies plays an important role in the low usage of home modalities in the US.