2026 CMS Reimbursement and Regulatory Standards
In the United States, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) updated the ESRD Prospective Payment System (PPS) for 2026, increasing the base rate for dialysis treatments to approximately $281.71 per session.
A significant change this year is the introduction of a "Non-Contiguous Area Payment Adjustment," which provides extra funding for centers in remote locations like Alaska, Hawaii, and the U.S. Pacific Territories to account for their higher non-labor operational costs.
Regulatory focus has also shifted toward Health Equity and Data Quality. Centers are now evaluated on the Prevalent Standardized Waitlist Ratio (PSWR), a metric that tracks how effectively a center helps its patients get onto a kidney transplant waitlist. In 2026, centers that fail to meet these transplant-access benchmarks face payment reductions. Furthermore, CMS has streamlined the patient experience survey (ICH CAHPS) to 39 questions, focusing more on quality of life and communication than on facility aesthetics.