THE LAW
| SOURCE | WHAT IT IS | CITED ON | LINK | CHECKED |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 42 CFR Part 494 (§§ 494.20–494.180) | The Conditions for Coverage for ESRD facilities—the federal floor, and the text the frontispiece is drawn from | Frontispiece · Plates I, III, VIII, IX · the essay | eCFR ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| 42 CFR 413.178 | The ESRD Quality Incentive Program’s payment authority | Plate VII | eCFR ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| 42 CFR 413.234 | Drug designation: TDAPA—how a new drug enters the bundle | Plate X | eCFR ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
THE GUIDANCE
| SOURCE | WHAT IT IS | CITED ON | LINK | CHECKED |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CMS ESRD Program Interpretive Guidance v1.1 (S&C-09-01, October 2008) | The V-tag text and the Measures Assessment Tool—the substantive interpretive corpus behind the survey | Plates VIII, IX | CMS PDF ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| State Operations Manual, Appendix H | Where the ESRD interpretive guidance and survey protocol now live—relocated by memo QSO-26-09-ESRD (May 2026) | Context for Plate IX | CMS PDF ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
THE RULES AND THE MONEY
| SOURCE | WHAT IT IS | CITED ON | LINK | CHECKED |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CY2026 ESRD PPS Final Rule (CMS-1830-F) | The year’s payment rule—base rate, QIP updates, AKI rate; published in the Federal Register November 24, 2025 | Plates X, XI, XII | Federal Register ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| ESRD Quality Incentive Program (incl. PY2028 fact sheet) | The pay-for-performance machinery—measures, scoring, payment years | Plates VII, XII | CMS ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| MedPAC reports (March 2025 · December 2025 · March 2026) | The commission’s read on dialysis payment adequacy and margins | Plate XI | MedPAC ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| May 2026 ESRD Network awards | The network-contract funding figures | Plate XI | Plate ledger | 2026-07-10 |
THE PRACTICE
| SOURCE | WHAT IT IS | CITED ON | LINK | CHECKED |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| KDOQI Clinical Practice Guideline—Hemodialysis Adequacy (2015 Update) | The best-practice targets the floor is often mistaken for | Plates I, VII, VIII | NKF ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| ISPD—prescribing high-quality, goal-directed peritoneal dialysis (Brown et al., Perit Dial Int 2020;40(3):244–253) | The 2020 guideline that dissolved the single PD adequacy number into the person | Plate VIII | ISPD ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| KDIGO | The global guideline body, cited alongside KDOQI | Plate VII | Plate ledger | 2026-07-10 |
THE DATA
| SOURCE | WHAT IT IS | CITED ON | LINK | CHECKED |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USRDS Annual Data Report (2025) | The national registry—incidence, prevalence, outcomes, cost | Plate XI | USRDS ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| CMS EQRS · CDC NHSN · UM-KECC | The three federal pipes one treatment’s data flows through; UM-KECC builds the Dialysis Facility Reports | Plate V | DFR ↗ · NHSN ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| OPTN / HRSA—Kidney Allocation System (2014) | How waiting time is credited and organs are matched | Plate III | OPTN ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| Medicare Part B-ID immunosuppressive benefit (2023) | Lifetime immunosuppressive coverage after the 36-month cliff, if no other coverage | Plate III | Medicare ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
THE FORMS AND THE DATASET
| SOURCE | WHAT IT IS | CITED ON | LINK | CHECKED |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CMS-2728 / CMS-2746 | The forms that open and close the federal record of a person’s kidney failure | Plate I | CMS forms ↗ | 2026-07-10 |
| The ESRD Atlas dataset | The atlas’s own working model—47 entities, 65 relationships, built from the public sources on this page; the generated plates are drawn from it | Plates VI, XII | In the workshop | 2026-07-06 |