Chronic kidney disease is fairly
common in the US the kidneys help
filter the waste products from the
body and chronic kidney disease.
The reason we're worried about it
is it could progress to kidney
failure and then the only way to
take care of kidney disease at
that time point is either dialysis
or get a kidney transplantation.
So when we talk about the
prevalence of kidney disease,
a lot of people don't realize that one
in seven US adults have kidney disease.
And that's about 15% of the population,
so fairly, fairly rampant.
And what worries us is kidney disease
is one of those things that's
considered like high blood pressure,
one of those silent killers.
So up to two out of five of our patients
don't even realize they have kidney disease.
And when you extrapolate the
numbers and you see the population
where kidney disease is prevalent,
it's really in the minority population.
So such that if you look at black
Americans for instance, in the US,
Blacks make up 13% of the US population.
But when it comes to our patients who
have kidney failure and needing dialysis,
35% of our patients on dialysis are blacks.
So really this raises,
you know,
the bar for us in terms of what we
need to do to fight kidney disease
and keep our patients healthy and
right there in the state of Georgia
where you are about 30,000 people are
on dialysis in the state of Georgia.
And so I think I think those
numbers when you look at the black
population in Georgia of about 3.3.
Million people representing about 1/3 of
Georgia population makes all the statistics,
statistics even more significant.
And so quite the prevalence
is is pretty much there.
Yes,
kidney disease disproportionately
affects Hispanics and blacks
and other minority population.
And the reason is the things that
lead to kidney damage and progressive
kidney disease like high blood
pressure and diabetes are fairly
rampant in our minority population.
And so by the time we healthcare providers,
specifically kidney care providers see them,
it's a little bit late in the game.
So you don't get symptoms when you have
kidney disease early in the process.
The kidney disease is fairly advanced
by the time it begins to show up.
And for people who don't have access to care,
right, this becomes a bit of a challenge.
So meaning are you getting your
blood pressure checked regularly?
Are you check,
are you having your sugar checked
regularly and if access?
To the ability to have primary case
not there then you know we deal with
the bigger problem of course as you
very well know overweight obesity
is fairly common in our minority
population and you have quite a
bit of strong family history of
inheritance to of kidney disease.
So all of those things are
certainly play a big role.
And then when you when you transition
to those things that we like to
do for our patients when they
come to see us being sure that we
provide as much education to them.
About kidney disease and how to slow
down progression of kidney disease so
they don't end up with kidney failure.
We do the best we can in our office settings.
We have our patients leave us temporarily.
We set up a follow up appointment for them,
but then they're huge,
huge barriers to care that's especially
very rampant in our minority population
such that you know in many instances when
we see them in three months time or six
months time when they come for follow up.
Appointment, we see their disease has
progressed some and you know and when you
ask them the things that they point out,
access to medications,
transportation, challenges,
a few of those things make it such
that even though we're doing the best
we can to care for them and we're
not able to successfully slow down
that progression of kidney disease.
So finding people who have the same
mindset or have the ability to
actually partner with us to provide
excellent care for these patients.
Especially in this arena we call value
based case of absolute importance and
that's where a company such as tomatoes
comes in where we partner with them
to find ways to slow down progression
of kidney disease and what do they do,
simple things,
but you and I will look at and say
well this just makes a lot of sense
and a lot is because our patients
don't even know that their insurance
is can pay for a few of these things.
So when we partner with a value
based care companies those things
that we don't necessarily have.
Control over U.S. healthcare providers.
A company such as tomatoes that provides
value based care can help along those lines.