Patient Experience
Moving Kidney Care Forward, 
One Person at a Time
At every stage of the kidney care journey — from slowing disease progression to helping support transplantation, from dialysis at home to acute hospital care — DaVita stands positioned to lead. Since day one, we’ve embraced this responsibility with an unshakable commitment to high quality and holistic care for all of our patients.
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​Over the course of our 25-year history, we’ve played a key role in reducing hospitalizations, improving mortality and helping propel the kidney care community to adopt universally high standards for quality of care.
Enduring Excellence 
in Care
As a comprehensive kidney care provider, DaVita has been a leader in clinical quality and innovation for 25 years. For the nine most recently reported years, we have continued to excel under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Five-Star Quality Rating system, which rates eligible dialysis centers based on the quality of outcomes. These rankings help patients, their families, and caregivers make more informed decisions about where patients receive care.
Earning Patient Trust
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) rating reflects patients’ likelihood to recommend DaVita to others. We track this metric as a key indicator of patient positivity and trust. Our most recent NPS of 64 for dialysis patients reflects our commitment to individualized, exceptional care and support.
Advancing Home Dialysis
An alternative to traditional in-center kidney dialysis, home dialysis empowers those patients who are medically eligible and prefer this modality to self-manage dialysis in their own homes. Just like in-center patients, home dialysis patients are supported with training, education, monitoring and ongoing care from DaVita clinical teams. In 2024, we continued to invest in home treatment, expanding the use of new technologies in our home dialysis care program to enhance patient and physician experience.
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In 2024, more than 15% of our patients dialyzed in the comfort and convenience of home.¹
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82% of our home dialysis patients now use a connected cycler, which allows clinical teams to access and review treatment results promptly.²
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We continue investing in our venture with Medtronic, Mozarc Medical, to improve access, experience and outcomes for kidney patients treating at home.
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Through our Kidney Smart education program, we offer a specialized Home Edition class with modality-specific education. Designed to help patients determine if a home modality is right for them, this class provides information and hands-on learning, plus a chance to hear from other patients about their experience with home dialysis.
​¹ Statistics are as of December 31, 2024, and are for U.S.-based patients only. Modality selections and decisions related to a patient’s care are always made by the attending nephrologist and patient, and provided pursuant to a physician’s order;
²As of December 31, 2024
8,200+
DaVita patients received a kidney transplant in 2024, our highest number yet.
Kidney transplant is the ideal treatment for those with ESKD who are eligible for this potentially life-saving procedure. Putting patient outcomes first, we’re working to expand transplantation access and education. We’re proud that more than 107,000 DaVita patients were referred for a transplant at least once by the end of 2024, representing our highest referral rate ever.
With the acquisition of transplant software company MedSleuth in 2021, DaVita deepened its effort to improve the transplant ecosystem, not only for DaVita patients, but for any patient seeking a transplant. We utilized Medsleuth’s BREEZE technology to standardize transplantation referrals, enabling easier and more effective sharing of information. As of December 2024, BREEZE has been implemented in 100% of DaVita centers nationwide. Learn more about the impact of this work here.
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We recognize that patient education also plays a key role in transplantation. Through resources such as our multimedia Transplant Smart® program, we’re helping ensure that every patient is informed and empowered. Learn more about transplantation and see a portion of our educational material here.
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With organ supply being the biggest barrier to meeting demand for kidney transplantation, DaVita invested in eGenesis, a company working to address the historical challenges of xenotransplantation.
Opening Doors to Transplantation
Advancing Value-Based Care
DaVita Integrated Kidney Care (DaVita IKC) is DaVita’s value-based care program. Davita IKC provides integrated care management services to health plans and government programs for members and beneficiaries diagnosed with end stage kidney disease (ESKD) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). The program brings together a range of services including health monitoring, clinical coordination, predictive analytics and medical claims analysis to pioneer new models that will drive the future of kidney care. Together with our partners, we’re helping patients access superior kidney healthcare to help generate improved clinical outcomes, while simultaneously helping to reduce overall medical costs.
Champions for Every Patient
Advancing health equity and access to care for all of our patients is an important component of our unwavering pursuit of a healthier tomorrow. We demonstrate this commitment by working to reduce and eliminate barriers so that our patients are empowered to achieve their optimal kidney health, regardless of demographic or social status.
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In 2024 we’re proud of:
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Establishing individualized health equity plans in more than 90% of our centers nationwide pursuant to the CMS guidelines for Healthy Communities. These plans are rooted in local data and focused on improving key clinical outcomes for all patients including patient populations experiencing the greatest barriers to home treatments, transplantation and safer long-term access points for treatment.
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Providing our front-line teammates with training so they better understand the cultures and perspectives of the patients they are serving, access to data dashboards with clinical outcomes stratified by demographics and appropriate support resources.
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Introducing new person-centered tools to further assess patient modality interest, provide greater home accessibility by identifying barriers and enable continued support to optimize kidney health outcomes.
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Executing a Transplant Equity program to identify strategies to markedly improve waitlist and transplant outcomes for our lowest-income and most medically vulnerable patients. This program is slated to expand in 2025.
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Building on our Person-Centered Approach to Kidney Care via a growing network of community kidney disease prevention programs and other interventions active in cities and rural areas nationwide.
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Our strategy to achieve equitable access to care for all patients focuses on person-centered care and data-based insights:
Building the foundation to mitigate pervasive inequities by creating awareness, identifying bias and understanding the data and patient insights to develop and scale interventions.
Addressing inequities with intentional, sustainable, root cause-focused interventions that can have a meaningful impact at the local and national level.
Creating ripples accelerated 
through meaningful collaborations across the kidney and 
larger health care communities to 
share learnings and amplify impact.
Making an 
Impact Where it Matters Most
DaVita serves an incredibly diverse patient population. Approximately 20% of our patients have a primary language other than English. More than 50% of our patients identify as Black or Hispanic. Many patients we serve are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid, representing some of the lowest income and most medically vulnerable.
Sector-wide data demonstrates that too often racial and socioeconomic disparities continue as patients advance through end stage kidney disease. We’re proud that our patients largely achieve similar outcomes across race in core clinical metrics such as hospitalizations, readmissions and infection rates in our U.S. outpatient dialysis centers.
One of our goals is to enable equity in kidney transplants, home dialysis use, and early kidney disease education and prevention in high-risk communities.
Kidney Health Collaboration with the YMCA
We offer comprehensive kidney education at no cost to the community through Kidney Smart. Available in person, online and by phone, the program provides kidney health education and lifestyle recommendations to help at-risk individuals understand kidney disease and apply strategies to help prevent disease progression.
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Expanding access to non-English language Kidney Smart resources so that more individuals who need this information can access it remains an initiative of focus. To date, we’ve delivered this essential education in 13 different languages.
Kidney Smart® Education
In 2024, we launched a community-based collaboration with the YMCA supporting chronic kidney disease (CKD) education and prevention. Focused on promoting access to care for all, the program will bring free health screenings and culturally-attuned health education to cities nationwide. At our very first screening event, 30% of 150 participants screened were found to have previously undiagnosed CKD, opening the door to earlier intervention. The event earned a Net Promoter Score of 93, indicating high participant satisfaction with the services offered.
Based on the success of an initial pilot, we have now expanded this approach to six additional markets, with support from the DaVita Giving Foundation.
“More screenings like this are needed and necessary. Keep doing what you are doing.”
— Screening Participant,
May 10, 2024
40,000+
participants in Kidney Smart in 2024
participants in 
Kidney Smart education since 2021
142,000+
+24%
increase in non-English language Kidney Smart attendance in 2024
For more information on our 2024 corporate citizenship initiatives, please visit our ESG Reporting Hub or download our full Community Care ESG Report. Unless otherwise indicated, the data included in this report is as of December 31, 2024 for the Company’s consolidated operations.