Michigan Dialysis Research and Education (MiDRE), is a 501 c3 Federal tax-exempt non-profit organization formed to improve the care of dialysis patients in Michigan. MiDRE advances practical initiatives derived from real-world experience in this areana which are designed to improve patient care, reduce overall costs, and which deserve to be supported from industry, government, the public and the charitable world.
Introduction
As a very busy, dedicated vascular access surgeon wrestling with the problems of dialysis patients over the last decade, I worked in an underserved and misunderstood field solving individual patient problems one by one, twenty to thirty cases a week.
Doing that, I frequently came face to face with problems outside of the limits of what a single surgeon in private practice could usually address – problems that existed for patients once they were released by the surgeon to use their dialysis accesss and then ran into trouble. There were so many problems beyond the operating room, there was only so much time, and there was no support for these extra efforts. Yet, something had to be done about improving the delivery of services for dialysis patients.
We formed Michigan Dialysis Research and Education (MiDRE), LLC, a Michigan non-profit and Federal tax-exempt organization, to provide local grass-roots educational services to local providers. It is our intent and our goal to work with patients, local providers, and national organizations to bring all helpful messages to each and every dialysis unit and provider in our region. It is also our intent to become a model of how to achieve quality improvement and cost reduction through local action.
MiDRE has a number of existing programs (see below) which have been tested and validated. Most of these programs are oriented toward improving patient management in the dialysis unit.
