YOU ARE HERE:   Home > Contact Us > Media/Press information > DOPPS Practice Monitor (DPM)

The Dialysis Outcomes and Practice Patterns Study (DOPPS) is launching the DOPPS Practice Monitor (DPM) to provide up-to-date trends in clinical care as the new Prospective Payment System (PPS) for renal dialysis services is implemented in January 2011.

The DPM initiative will feature a publicly available website that will provide timely reports aggregating data from over 140 U.S. dialysis facilities and describing trends in many different clinical aspects of hemodialysis practice across the country. Data will be updated every four months, with only a three-to-four-month lag between data collection and Web posting. The DPM website is available at http://www.dopps.org/DPM. In December 2010, new reports will be added, representing data through August 2010. Additional features and content will be released on the site over the first several months of operation.

DPM reports will provide a timely way to monitor trends in U.S. dialysis practice during implementation of the new bundled End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) PPS, an initiative of the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). In addition to the PPS, which starts in 2011, the DPM will also monitor clinical care as the CMS Quality Incentive Program is launched in 2012. The DPM is the only site of its kind available to provide this level of assessment.

The DPM website will present information about demographics, comorbidities, anemia practices, bone and mineral practices, dialysis prescription and dose, cardiovascular medication use, nutrition-related practice, quality of life, and vascular access use. Presenting these data in the form of more than 1,500 regularly updated charts, figures, and data tables, the DPM will provide comparisons and trends over time in each of these practice areas for the United States as a whole. It will also provide comparisons by facility types, which include clinics owned by small and large dialysis organizations, hospital and freestanding clinics, and those located in rural and urban areas. Ongoing trend analysis will help identify significant changes in practice. Each DPM report will include an executive summary highlighting key findings for the community, as well as slides to download and information about methodology and statistical approaches.

A March 2010 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report identified groups of beneficiaries who may be most vulnerable to adverse change after initiation of the PPS because of above-average dialysis costs: patients with Medicaid and those of black race. The DPM provides a representative sample of these patients and will be a resource to follow trends in their care. The DPM will also be a resource to monitor access to care as the new PPS is implemented.

The DOPPS is a prospective cohort study investigating practices related to the best outcomes for hemodialysis patients in 12 countries. Administered by the nonprofit Arbor Research Collaborative for Health of Ann Arbor, Mich., the DOPPS is supported by scientific grants from Amgen (since 1996), Kyowa Hakko Kirin (since 1999, in Japan), Genzyme (since 2009), and Abbott (since 2009), without restrictions on publications. The DOPPS is based on patient- and facility-level data reported from nationally representative samples of facilities within each country. The DPM facility sample is nationally representative based upon recent analyses using CMS data that demonstrate similarity between the sample and the national data across the range of observed practice variation.

The DPM will fill an important need, providing a source of timely, representative data, while tracking the effects of the ESRD PPS on dialysis practice. Its findings can serve as an early warning system for possible adverse effects on clinical care and as a basis for patient and dialysis community outreach, editorial comment, and informed advocacy.

Inquiries to:
Caroline Shevrin
Senior Managing Editor
Arbor Research Collaborative for Health
734.665.4108, ext. 274
Info@ArborResearch.org