In data we trust: The role and utility of dialysis provider databases in the policy process

摘要

The American dialysis setting represents one of themost data-dense disease settings in the world (1).With the hope of better understanding ESRD, itstreatment, and its associated costs, data are collectedthrough public databases, registries, and proprietarydatabases. Although no one data source provides acomplete picture, data help inform health policy, withdifferent types of data providing different insights.In this review, we discuss the different data sourcesin the ESRD treatment setting, with a particularfocus on the data coming from large dialysis organizations(LDOs) and their dialysis information systems(DISs). We discuss the benefits and limitationsof these DISs and how they help inform healthcarepolicy.