Renal Rehabilitation — Where Are the Data?

WE all have a stake in the billion-dollar End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) program, not least because its cost is borne largely by Medicare. We would naturally like to receive frequent, comprehensive, and reliable reports about its progress, along the lines of the articles and newsletters produced until four years ago by Dr. John Bergan and his associates at the Human Renal Transplant Registry, kept by the American College of Surgeons and funded by the National Institutes of Health.1 Unfortunately, since 1977 when the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) took over the ESRD program, medical information about it has been woefully . . .