Healthcare Costs: Kidney Transplant

Over the years, diseases have become a challenge to human beings living a long life. The disorders range from organ failures such as kidney and heart failures or even tumors that lead to most of the cancers experienced. To avoid shortening of human life by the diseases, surgical operations are required to eliminate the tumors or even carry out the transplant of the organs that have experienced failure. However, the surgical operations are sometimes costly to the patients. Therefore, the paper will encompass the cost of a kidney transplant and some of the operational procedures.

In the United States of America, the cost of a kidney transplant in 2017 was estimated to be around $250,000 (Axelrod, Schnitzler, Xiao, Irish, Tuttle‐Newhall, Chang, & Lentine, 2018). The cost involved both the direct and indirect costs of the transplants. The indirect costs include the upkeep cost of the patient’s relative who will be staying in the hospital and food the patient will be consuming during the surgery period. On the other hand, the direct cost is that which affects the patient directly, and it involves the following: the medication the patient will undergo during and after the surgical procedure, consultancy fee, and other treatment-related bills on the patient.

Before the treatment process, there are procedures to be followed before the surgical operation is conducted on a patient. To begin with, the patient first calls the hospital of interest and books an appointed with a physicist. After booking of the appointment, the patient reports to the hospital and is allowed to see the doctor of interest. The patient then sees the doctor and pays a consultant fee. The patient is then given anICd10 code at the hospital. The code given to the patient is specific to that particular disease. According to the healthcare institution, the code is to track healthcare revenue cycle of the patient from the time of admission into the healthcare institution, treatment, discharge, and payment of the bills incurred by the patient (Leenheer, 2012). Later, the patient is booked for theatre where the patient will undergo the surgical procedure. Before the surgical procedure, the kidney is examined. The examination includes whether the donor is fit to donate the organ. Additionally, the organ is examined whether it will be compatible with the. Here, mostly the HA compatibility of the patient and the donor is tested.  Once, compatibility is reached, the organ is donated. After the donation has taken place, the patient then undergoes surgical procedure and receives the donated organ. The patient is then monitored for a few days by the surgeons on whether the organ is functioning well in the recipient’s body before being discharged and allowed to go home.

In the final analysis, the cost of a kidney transplant is quite expensive. Therefore, people are urged to avoid things that will endanger the functioning of the organ which may require a surgical procedure. Additionally, not only the kidney should be protected, but also other organs that are vital to human life should be protected. On the other hand, the surgical procedure of the kidney transplant is a very demanding process that requires patience from both the patient and the surgeon for the process to be a success.

 

References

Axelrod, D. A., Schnitzler, M. A., Xiao, H., Irish, W., Tuttle‐Newhall, E., Chang, S. H., … & Lentine, K. L. (2018). An economic assessment of contemporary kidney transplant practice. American Journal of Transplantation, 18(5), 1168-1176.

Leenheer, C. (2012). The clinical documentation advantage protecting the revenue cycle under ICD-10: with the transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10, healthcare providers’ revenue cycles will undergo one of the greatest transformations in the industry’s recent history. Healthcare Financial Management, 66(9), 104-110.

 

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