U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. used a visit to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth on Tuesday to roll out a national plan aimed at kidney disease, the Fort Worth Report reported.
The Kidney Care National Plan sets three priorities, according to an HHS announcement dated Oct. 20: preventing kidney failure through earlier detection and treatment, improving dialysis care and widening patient options such as home-based care, and reforming the organ transplant system with stronger safety, transparency and accountability rules.
HHS said kidney disease affects an estimated 37 million American adults, most of whom do not know they have it. The department also said a new analysis links a 2019 executive order on kidney care to roughly 2,000 more kidney transplants a year, and that it plans a national strategy to make living organ donation easier.
A closed roundtable, then questions
Kennedy met with other federal officials and JPS Health Network leaders in a roundtable that was closed to the media, according to the Report. Abe Sutton of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation and Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration, were among the officials at the hospital.
Afterward, Kennedy and JPS President and CEO Dr. Karen Duncan took questions. Duncan said JPS, Tarrant County's safety-net hospital, cares for more than 40% of the county's uninsured residents. She described the hospital's job as offering access and treatment and moving further toward prevention through its community sites.
Tarrant County Public Health data cited by the Report put the county's kidney disease death rate at 15.4 per 100,000 people, above the Texas rate of 15.2 and the national rate of 13.1. The rate is highest among non-Hispanic Black residents, at 24 per 100,000.
