LAUSR

Key Points Question How are the dialysis facilities randomly assigned to Medicare’s End-Stage Renal Disease Treatment Choices (ETC) model different from control facilities? Findings In this cross-sectional study of 6062 facilities treating 316 927 patients, patients receiving treatment at ETC-assigned facilities had lower prevalence of living-donor transplantation, transplantation wait-listing, and peritoneal dialysis use than those treated at control facilities. ETC-assigned and control facilities were also different with respect to facility ownership and patient demographic characteristics. Meaning These findings suggest that ETC model evaluators should account for these preintervention imbalances in outcomes and other participant facility characteristics to minimize bias in their analyses of the model’s associations with outcomes.