What is required in order for a unit to become certified as a home provider? How long does the process take? Is there a separate certification for pd and hemo programs?
If you’re asking if there are separate requirements for clinics to be certified to offer in-center hemo or home training in PD or hemo, the answer is yes. To do in-center dialysis, clinics don’t need to have staff that are experienced at teaching patients to do self-care. To do home dialysis training, the training nurse must have dialysis experience plus experience training patients. The clinic must have training policies and procedures and a training manual. There needs to be an arrangement for getting supplies and machines (if needed) and a back up facility if the home patient needs to do dialysis in-center.
Medicare sends a surveyor to do a site visit to the clinic to make sure the clinic has met all requirements for either the in-center or home training program before the clinic is certified. A clinic must be certified before Medicare will pay for any treatments. It can take a long time to get the Medicare survey scheduled because the state survey agency (usually the health department) is surveying many health providers, not just dialysis and funding for surveys is limited. You can read more about what is required at www.homedialysis.org/v1/medicare/faqs-pros.shtml#10.
Beth writes:
To do home dialysis training, the training nurse must have dialysis experience plus experience training patients. The clinic must have training policies and procedures and a training manual.
How does the nurse get experience training patients? My understanding is that the machine company has their trainer come in and train the nurses who will be over the home program.
And my question was, if a unit is certified to offer pd, does that necessarily mean that it is also certified to offer home hemo?
The process for an establish dialysis program is pretty easy, really, especially if they have a PD program because they have the suppot system already inplace. There is a form (CMS form 3427) that the facility has to send to the state agency. The facility also has to place one patient on that modality so that there is some history for the agency to review. The state will send a surveyor out to review policies and procedures as well as staff qualifications and the patient’s chart. If all is in order, they will approve the facility for this new modality.
If a facility is just approved for PD, they need to do this to add home hemo. The PD training experience counts towards patient training experience.