Community Care

Being a leader in American health care means being a responsible corporate community. Community Care, DaVita’s vision for social responsibility, is our philosophy for balancing our business responsibilities with our social, economic and environmental ones. Since we began in 1999, DaVita has had a vision for creating a true community — one that cares for our teammates as well as our patients. This investment in creating a community has inspired our teammates to realize their full potential and to deliver superior quality care to our patients.

You are invited to learn more about DaVita in the pages of this annual report. Community Care highlights our company's philosophy written by our CEO, Kent "KT" Thiry, explains our Trilogy of Care and all of the programs that are included in: Caring for our patients, Caring for our teammates, Caring for our world. Here is a highlight of what you will find in the pages of Community Care. 

Caring for our patients

Patient care is our priority.

DaVita teammates work with physician partners to achieve superior clinical outcomes for our dialysis patients. DaVita is an industry leader when it comes to offering modality choices that fit our patient health and lifestyle needs. Investing in education for people with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and their caregivers also helps patients live a better life with CKD.

• Nine years in a row DaVita has improved clinical outcomes
• 93% of patients would recommend DaVita for dialysis
• 150,000 people have been educated by DaVita Kidney Education and You® (KEY) program

DaVita leads the way.

DaVita provides other renal-related services in addition to dialysis for people with chronic kidney disease. Lifeline Vascular Access^SM, DaVita Clinical Research® (DCR), DaVita Laboratory Services®, DVA Laboratory Services^SM, DaVita Rx^SM and VillageHealth^SM are working to give kidney care patients a greater quality of life.

• When added to the company’s $163M in federal and state taxes, the approximate savings to the health care system exceeds the company’s after-tax profits for 2008 by approximately $180M
• Lifeline Vascular Access managed centers have a 97% overall procedure success rate on more than 250,000 patient encounters
• DCR is the first and only kidney care research network to offer services across the entire development lifecycle

• DaVita Laboratory Services and DVA Laboratory Services are fully accredited by federal and state governing agencies as well as the College of American Pathologists Laboratory Accreditation program

• DaVita Rx is the first and largest U.S. renal pharmacy with results demonstrating greater medication adherence and 25% fewer hospitalizations per year

• VillageHealth helps 6,000 patients in 22 states and is the first renal disease management organization to achieve National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) Disease Management accreditation

Creating a community is important at DaVita.

Teammates and patients come together in each center to get to know each other as individuals and share in each others’ lives.

• More than 1,000 people have volunteered more than 294,000 hours to be Village Greeters in DaVita dialysis centers
• More than 4,400 individual and team awards have been presented to DaVita teammates through the Shining Star Caregiver program
• 25,000 letters of thanks have been presented to physicians from their patients through the Thanks, Doc! program
• DaVita Circle of Life has helped patients, their family members and teammates honor patients who have passed away

Caring for our teammates

At DaVita, we're teammates.

DaVita would not be able to provide quality kidney care without its more than 32,000 teammates. Offering opportunities to grow both professionally and personally is crucial to maintaining a healthy DaVita Village.

• Investing in training with more than 1,000,000 hours of teammate training and development
• Providing advanced educational programs through Redwoods Leadership Development and RN Scholarship programs
• Maintaining regular communication through live open forums and regular teleconferences for teammates to have access to senior management
• Ranked #1 in U.S. among national health care service companies for five consecutive years by Training magazine
• Only nationwide health care services company ranked in Modern Healthcare magazine as one of the 100 Best Places to Work in 2008
• First FORTUNE 500® and health care company to make the list in WorldBlu’s Most Democratic Workplaces™ 2008
• Creating a diverse workplace with 45% of teammates self-identified as non-Caucasian
• Offering fair salaries and health and wellness benefits with 33 cents of each dollar of revenue going to teammates
• Acknowledging and awarding teammate achievements through a variety of programs
• Extending assistance to teammates and their families in times of financial and personal crisis
• Our CEO has made a three-year (2007-2009) pledge to give his salary to kidney and health-related charities, including teammate support programs
• Ensuring 100% of teammates fulfill compliance training
• Committing to robust corporate governance policies and practices

Caring for our world

Saving lives far from home.

Being thoughtful citizens and caring for those in the world around us have helped thousands of people around the globe. DaVita-founded charities have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to assist those overseas and at home.

Bridge of Life—DaVita Medical Missions™ has helped save lives far from home by organizing 12 missions to countries including Pakistan, Cameroon, India, Ecuador and the Philippines. Approximately 150 DaVita teammates have volunteered to bring chronic kidney disease and dialysis care to underserved areas. More than $500,000 has been donated by DaVita for the missions.

Increasing awareness for kidney disease.

The Kidney TRUST™ works to increase awareness of chronic kidney disease through public education and no-cost, rapid screening tests. Monies have been donated to The Kidney TRUST through fundraising events including DaVita Kidney Awareness Run | Walk™ events and Tour DaVita.

DaVita Kidney Awareness events have raised more than $500,000 and Tour DaVita has raised more than $1,000,000 in the last two years to promote chronic kidney disease education.

Community service in our neighborhoods.

Since 2006, teammates have been awarded 95 grants and service projects and spent more than 11,700 hours to help benefit their local communities in several ways including planting a community garden and creating a neighborhood play area.

Going green is another way we help our planet.

DaVita has been working to reduce our environmental impact and formed Village Green in 2007 to encourage, enable and recognize teammate efforts to go green. By reducing medical wastes in our centers and conserving resources in our business offices, DaVita practices earth-friendly kidney care throughout the company.

Community Care

We invite you to visit the DaVita Village through the pages of our annual social responsibility report. We are proud of the company we have created and embrace the opportunity to soar beyond where we are today.

Learn about the DaVita vision for social responsibility

• View the Community Care book »