Anyone else receive new cartridges with a smaller kidney attached to the plastic with twist ties vs. hooking on??
I am hoping numbers will remain as good, but it sure is a lot smaller than the previous kidney.
Cathy
home hemo 9/04
NxStage 3/05
I recieved resupply yesterday. The new dialysor is smaller than what I have been using. Makes me a little nervous. I am not a small guy. Too bad NXSTAGE isn’t more open about changes they make. I will check it out and reply.
I called Nxstage the person I talked to indicated that a design change had been made and the new smaller kidney functions the same as the previous one does. He also said that everyone that was switched to the new version should have recieved a letter concerning the switch. It will be interesting to see what the numbers say.
To the best of my knowledge, “Smaller is Better” …its all about making this popular dialysis machine even smaller!
If they can make this cycler fit in the palm of my hand, man I would be a very happy happy home dialyzor…hehehe…
I was talking to Scott at NxStage yesterday. He had called me to make sure we weren’t having any further problems with the conductivity failures we were having last month.
I mentioned the smaller filters to him. He said that the new filters actually had a slightly larger surface area than the older ones. Should work as well or better than the others. I would assume that there was a cost savings involved, but that is just supposition.
The first thing that struck me about the new dialyzer was that it took less effort to get the air out of it during setup. In fact the first time, it seemed like there was hardly any excess air in it. That saves a little time and, but I’m not too crazy about the twists. I’m sure that the redesign without the plastic tabs is a cost saver, and I’m in favor of anything that can bring the cost down. The less expensive the treatment, assumimg NxStage passes some of the savings on, the more people and clinics will begin using it. And the sooner dialysis in general becomes less expensive, the sooner Medicare will pay for more treatments.
Rich Berkowitz
Skokie, IL
NxStage since 2/06
Dialysis sine 3/03
All of these cost savings taking place for equipment and materials, but yet our insurance and cost of treatments remains to increase…
Nxstage has yet to be profitable a single quarter that it has been in existence and has accumulated losses in excess of $123 million dollars.
As a young and growing company, there needs to be many cost savings and many more sales before they even start to show a profit, much less dig out of a $123 million dollar hole.
[quote=billable;13253]Nxstage has yet to be profitable a single quarter that it has been in existence and has accumulated losses in excess of $123 million dollars.
As a young and growing company, there needs to be many cost savings and many more sales before they even start to show a profit, much less dig out of a $123 million dollar hole.[/quote]
I hate to say, but I think they’re trying all they can to keep afloat. Moving manfufacturing to Mexico may really make a difference. The Pureflow Sl is one reason why they’re doing this, those bagged dialysate products are very very expensive to ship. The biggest cost saving will really be on cutting more than 1/2 the shipping of bagged dialysate.
The worsest part is that the Medicare still won’t pay for extra dialysis…
[
Getting rid of air in these new puppies is a breeze. I love them and numbers are good. Erich
[quote=TheRiverdude;13394][
Getting rid of air in these new puppies is a breeze. I love them and numbers are good. Erich[/quote]
Your right about that, I did notice that too! Its quite light weight too! 