title: The United States Renal Data System: a source of national norms for ESRD patient outcome and process of care.
abstract: The Annual Data Report of the United States Renal Data System provides a rich resource of published summaries of the United States norms for end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patient outcome and process of care. It includes summaries of patient mortality rates, hospitalization rates, causes of death, and rates of withdrawal from dialysis based on a near-census of ESRD patients in the United States. Norms for some measures of the process of delivering dialysis therapy, including dose of dialysis are also reported, based on a national random sample of ESRD patients. National summaries of measures of patient outcome and process of care provide a useful benchmark against which specific experience can be compared. Such comparisons can be part of a quality improvement program that encourages caregivers to provide high quality care to ESRD patients. While the Annual Data Report provides summaries of several fundamental measures related to high quality care, including patient survival and quality of life, other measures need to be developed and studied, including more direct measures of quality of life.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109-2029, USA.
authors.forename: R A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Wolfe
mesh_terms: D002423:Cause of Death; D006801:Humans; D007256:Information Systems; D007676:Kidney Failure, Chronic / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010043:Outcome and Process Assessment, Health Care; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D017582:Renal Replacement Therapy; D016019:Survival Analysis; D014481:United States