BETTER KIDNEY TREATMENT
WVU Medicine to target high cost of disease in joining other insurers on nationwide problem
WVU Medicine is joining other insurers in targeting the rising cost of treating chronic kidney disease, which affects 37 million people in the U.S., most of whom don’t even know they have it.
Morgantown- based WVU Medicine has inked a valuebased partnership with Interwell Health, a Waltham, Mass., company founded in 2019, with the goal of lowering the total cost of covering kidney disease care while improving patient outcomes.
West Virginia has the highest mortality rate in the nation for people living with chronic kidney disease, which affects one in seven people in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
“This partnership with Interwell opens the door to better care for our patients,” WVU Medicine nephrologist Rebecca Schmidt said in a prepared statement. “By approaching kidney disease from a population health perspective, we can use machine learning and other technologies to examine the progression of disease and use that data to implement more effective treatment plans.”
UPMC Health Plan and Humana are among the other insurers that have partnered with Interwell, which promises total cost savings of $500 per month per patient.
Interwell claims its program can help patients avoid unnecessary emergency room and hospital admissions, as well as other measures, while sharing the savings with providers.
The National Kidney Foundation estimates that 90% of people with the disease are not aware they have it because the signs are often missed.
Like UPMC and Humana, WVU Medicine’s Peak Health plan sells Medicare Advantage and other health insurance coverage.
Medicare expenditures for people with end-stage renal disease reached $52.3 billion in 2021, up from $48.1 billion in 2011, according to the CDC. The total cost of caring for people with chronic kidney disease represents 33.8% of Medicare’s total fee-for-service spending budget.
More than 1,800 kidney specialists in the U.S. and Puerto Rico collaborate with Interwell, supporting 125,000 patients in cost- sharing arrangements with private payers and the government, according to the company.