Forecast of the number of patients with end-stage renal disease in the United States to the year 2010.

As the United States end-stage renal disease (ESRD) program enters the new millennium, the continued growth of the ESRD population poses a challenge for policy makers, health care providers, and financial planners. To assist in future planning for the ESRD program, the growth of patient numbers and Medicare costs was forecasted to the year 2010 by modeling of historical data from 1982 through 1997. A stepwise autoregressive method and exponential smoothing models were used. The forecasting models for ESRD patient numbers demonstrated mean errors of -0.03 to 1.03%, relative to the observed values. The model for Medicare payments demonstrated -0.12% mean error. The R(2) values for the forecasting models ranged from 99.09 to 99.98%. On the basis of trends in patient numbers, this forecast projects average annual growth of the ESRD populations of approximately 4.1% for new patients, 6.4% for long-term ESRD patients, 7.1% for dialysis patients, 6.1% for patients with functioning transplants, and 8.2% for patients on waiting lists for transplants, as well as 7.7% for Medicare expenditures. The numbers of patients with ESRD in 2010 are forecasted to be 129,200 +/- 7742 (95% confidence limits) new patients, 651,330 +/- 15,874 long-term ESRD patients, 520,240 +/- 25,609 dialysis patients, 178,806 +/- 4349 patients with functioning transplants, and 95,550 +/- 5478 patients on waiting lists. The forecasted Medicare expenditures are projected to increase to $28.3 +/- 1.7 billion by 2010. These projections are subject to many factors that may alter the actual growth, compared with the historical patterns. They do, however, provide a basis for discussing the future growth of the ESRD program and how the ESRD community can meet the challenges ahead.