More Medicare patients are getting screened for chronic kidney disease (CKD), but the needle on early detection hasn't moved nearly enough. A nationwide claims analysis by the National Kidney Foundation and Manatt Health Strategies reviewed Medicare fee-for-service and Medicare Advantage data from 2016 to 2023, finding that guideline-concordant screening — meaning both eGFR and urine albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR) testing — increased modestly across both groups. Yet new CKD diagnosis rates remained stubbornly low, hovering between just 3–4% over the study period.

The bigger concern? Most new diagnoses are landing at stage G3, not the earlier stages G1 or G2 where intervention could make the biggest difference. Albuminuria diagnosis rates, in particular, showed little improvement — a gap that limits population health efforts and risk prediction tools like the Kidney Failure Risk Equation.

By the Numbers:

• eGFR + UACR screening rose from 17% → 20% (traditional Medicare) and 24% → 28% (Medicare Advantage)
• New CKD diagnosis rates: only 3% (fee-for-service) and 4% (Medicare Advantage)
• Stage G3 diagnoses rose from 40% → 47% (Medicare Advantage) and 42% → 51% (fee-for-service)

Why it matters: Catching CKD earlier means more time to slow disease progression with lifestyle changes and therapies like SGLT2 inhibitors and finerenone. Closing the gap between screening and early diagnosis could prevent thousands of patients from reaching kidney failure.