Seven Georgia hospitals have earned praise for their work in a kidney disease pilot project that improves the care of their patients and promises a nationwide ripple effect.

The Georgia hospitals spent the past year focusing on detection of chronic kidney disease (CKD) among patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) in a project funded by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and coordinated by gmcf, the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization for Georgia. The hospitals’ work serves as the foundation for a national effort involving leading academic medical centers.

“Kidney failure is a significant public health problem,” said Thomas Hostetter, MD, director of the National Kidney Disease Education Program (NKDEP), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Addressing the Georgia hospitals, Hostetter cited the $25.2 billion spent on kidney failure care in 2002, an amount that exceeded the entire NIH budget and represented six percent of all Medicare payments.

Simple screening can detect kidney disease in early stages, when treatment and changes in behavior might delay the need for dialysis or transplants. The Georgia hospitals worked to make such screening routine for cardiovascular patients, one group at high risk for developing kidney disease.

The participating hospitals were Emory University Hospital and Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, MCG Health Inc. and University Hospital in Augusta, Hamilton Medical Center in Dalton, Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah, and East Georgia Regional Medical Center in Statesboro.

“These hospitals’ groundbreaking work has served to show us how we might approach the problem of improving chronic kidney disease care in hospitals,” said William McClellan, MD, MPH, who is a clinical coordinator at gmcf and a clinical professor at the Emory University School of Medicine. “The lessons we have learned from this pilot have already been incorporated into national efforts to improve kidney disease care and ease the burden of end-stage renal disease.”

Academic medical center interest in the nationwide Collaborative is strong, McClellan said. Participants will attend three “learning sessions” in Atlanta in 2005 with their work to be showcased at an Outcomes Congress in early 2006. gmcf is coordinating the national effort, which is funded by CMS, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“Academic medical centers are the place where people are trained,” Hostetter said. “That’s not just physicians, but nurses and dieticians, all those involved in the treatment of kidney disease. The national effort will have a magnifying effect on what the Georgia hospitals have accomplished.”

McClellan also praised the National Kidney Foundation of Georgia for its support of the state pilot project.