DaVita Pressures Patients into At-Home Dialysis Despite Risks, Class Action Claims

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A proposed class action lawsuit claims that dialysis provider DaVita Inc. pressures patients into using risky at-home peritoneal dialysis (PD) treatments with the primary goal of increasing sales.

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The 28-page medical lawsuit alleges that DaVita has, over the past 10 years, prioritized profits over patients’ health by coercing vulnerable patients into switching from in-center dialysis to peritoneal dialysis, a needle-free, at-home treatment that relies on a surgically inserted abdominal catheter to infuse a cleansing solution and cycle waste out of the body.

This in-home treatment allegedly reduces costs and drives revenue for DaVita by minimizing the need for in-facility dialysis care, increasing DaVita’s reimbursement (given patients must use PD seven days a week) and providing government incentives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

According to the lawsuit, DaVita employees are systematically pressured into pushing peritoneal dialysis treatment through a sales program called MATCH-D that imposes quotas on them. The case argues that through this program, Davita staff’s performance is not judged by quality of patient care, but rather on how many patients they are able to get on PD treatment. DaVita staff who fail to meet the company’s quotas are subjected to “retaliation, intimidation, and humiliation by DaVita’s managing agents, … placing their jobs at risk,” the case says.

Importantly, the suit notes that many DaVita managers have no medical background or training, and have instead used their sales backgrounds to enforce a profit-first environment at DaVita.

To drive patient conversion to PD, the complaint contends, DaVita medical and non-medical staff members exaggerate the benefits of PD treatment while minimizing the risks, including by claiming that DaVita PD allows for safe travel and swimming, maintains kidney function, reduces dietary restrictions and increases transplant outcomes. Conversion to PD is achieved through any means possible, the complaint alleges, noting that DaVita personnel are “encouraged to use patients’ vulnerabilities, fears, and needs as leverage to close the ‘sale.’”

Despite DaVita’s claims, the class action complaint asserts that peritoneal dialysis poses several dangerous risks and downsides that are often not disclosed in full to prospective patients, including risk of infections like peritonitis, abdominal hernias, the need to carry bulky equipment (and consequential travel limitations), sleep disturbances, strict sterility requirements, a permanent catheter, metabolic impacts, the heavy commitment of daily treatment, and treatment fatigue.

The plaintiff, a California resident, claims to have suffered at the hands of DaVita after a kidney cancer diagnosis in 2015 that required surgery and ultimately left him with serious kidney issues. In 2024, the suit says, the plaintiff began in-person dialysis treatment at a DaVita clinic and was quickly encouraged by staff members to switch to at-home PD treatment. According to the complaint, the plaintiff was “relentlessly bombarded” with “exaggerated claims and outright falsehoods about PD,” especially after finishing his dialysis sessions, when he was physically weak, semi-conscious, and had low blood pressure. The pressure was worsened by the fact that DaVita deliberately scheduled his dialysis sessions at 4:00 a.m., the suit says.

The case relays that after constant pressure, the plaintiff began PD and started noticing immediate downsides, including an overwhelmed living space with PD equipment, the inability to travel (which the plaintiff voiced he needed to do for work when he began DaVita treatment), catheter issues that required surgical repair, several peritonitis infections that led to hospitalization, and most devastatingly, decreased eligibility for a kidney transplant.

Per the complaint, the plaintiff’s experience “is not an isolated incident but part of DaVita’s widespread, systematic practice of deceiving and coercing patients into PD treatment to maximize profits.”

The DaVita class action lawsuit looks to represent all current and former DaVita patients residing in California who received PD treatment at any point within the past 10 years of the filing of the complaint.

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