Employment among Patients Starting Dialysis in the United States

Background and objectives: Patients with ESRD face significant challenges to remaining employed. It is unknown when in the course of kidney disease patients stop working. Design, setting, participants, & measurements: We examined employment trends over time among patients ages 18-54 years old who initiated dialysis in the United States between 1996 and 2013 from a national ESRD registry. We compared unadjusted trends in employment at the start of dialysis and 6 months before ESRD and used linear probability models to estimate changes in employment over time after adjusting for patient characteristics and local unemployment rates in the general population. We also examined employment among selected vulnerable patient populations and changes in employment in the 6 months preceding dialysis initiation. Results: Employment was low among patients starting dialysis throughout the study period at 23%-24%, and 38% of patients who were employed 6 months before ESRD stopped working by dialysis initiation. However, after adjusting for observed characteristics, the probability of employment increased over time; patients starting dialysis between 2008 and 2013 had a 4.7% (95% confidence interval, 4.3% to 5.1%) increase in the absolute probability of employment at the start of dialysis compared with patients starting dialysis between 1996 and 2001. Black and Hispanic patients were less likely to be employed than other patients starting dialysis, but this gap narrowed during the study period. Conclusions: Although working-aged patients in the United States starting dialysis have experienced increases in the adjusted probability of employment over time, employment at the start of dialysis has remained low.