End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Treatment Choices (ETC) Model Operations

More than 550,000 Medicare beneficiaries have end-stage renal disease (ESRD), a condition requiring treatment with dialysis or a kidney transplant. AIR supports the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in efforts to improve care for people with chronic kidney disease, including ESRD. The ESRD Treatment Choices Model (ETC Model) is designed to encourage home dialysis and kidney transplants for people with ESRD and is the first CMS Innovation Center model to incorporate health equity into provider performance scoring and payment incentives.

As the ETC Model Operations Support Contractor, AIR provides program analysis and operations support for Model implementation activities in the following areas: rulemaking support; participant identification and management; beneficiary attribution; execution of payment methodologies, including benchmarking, performance score calculations and payment adjustments; regular reporting on Model trends and performance; documentation of all business, functional and technical requirements, including detailed business process models; development of technical specifications and implementation methodologies; and providing technical assistance to internal and external stakeholders.

Approximately 130,000 Medicare beneficiaries are attributed to the ETC Model, which spans 3,600 dialysis facilities and 3,400 clinicians, largely nephrologists.