Dialysis is expensive. When I was on in-clinic hemodialysis 3x per week, I (or my insurance) was paying about $20,000 per month. That’s right… quarter of a million dollars per year. However, I know most of the patients were on Medicare since few looked like they were able to work.
Recently I spoke with someone that works for the largest provider of hemodialysis services and he gave me a few numbers:
- Cost per daily session = $280
- Price charged to Medicare = $260
- Price charged to private insurance = $1,000
This is consistent with a Baxter website for providers that listed the cost at $42,000/year and Medicare revenue of $41,000/year. Basically dialysis clinics lose a bit of money on each Medicare patient but make a lot from parents with private insurance. My source also told me that 90% of patients were on Medicare so all the profits came from the 10% on private insurance.
I’m not sure why my clinic (non-profit hospital affiliated) charged 50% more. Maybe because I was using a chest catheter instead of a fistula? All I know was that only nurses could connect/disconnect me whereas technicians were able to work with patients with a fistula.
Life with chronic diseases 