The Origin of Rejuvenate’s Innovative Kidney Transplant Solutions

Dr. Mike Rees has spent the majority of his life’s journey trying to figure out how to make sick people better.

“My way of doing that has been to help in the kidney disease space, to give people with kidney disease a healthier and better life,” says Rees.

The innovative solutions developed by Rees and his partners have led to thousands of extra kidney transplants around the world. But progress didn’t happen overnight.

While serving as a kidney transplant surgeon, Rees grew tired of watching patients grow sicker on dialysis while waiting to be matched with a kidney.

Along with his father, Rees created software that would better match those who are waiting for a kidney transplant with willing donors. He then met Dr. Alvin Roth, a Stanford economist, who had the idea to apply economic theory and market design to Rees’s kidney matching program and create chains of kidney transplants here in the U.S. and around the world.

Together, they created a program that matches up more patients waiting for kidneys with more donors in the shortest amount of time. And, they didn’t stop there.

“One of the cool things about the kidney disease space is that the best care is also the least expensive care,” says Rees. “That presented an opportunity to change the way we did things in America.”

Rees and Roth saw a need to help benefits directors understand kidney transplants as a strategy to reduce healthcare costs, not increase them.

“The truth is that benefits directors should celebrate a transplant because, for every dollar they spend on a kidney transplant, they save two dollars avoiding dialysis,” he adds.

Rees and Roth teamed up, once again, to launch Rejuvenate Kidney Transplant Solutions. Rejuvenate partners with brokers, benefits consultants, captives and self-insured employers to overcome barriers to transplantation and avoid the great financial burden of dialysis. We’re talking up to $500,000 per employee with kidney failure.

“It’s a win-win-win,” says Rees. “Lower costs, better care and better access to something a lot of people think you can’t achieve in the kidney disease space because there are a limited number of kidneys that we can transplant.”

Since its founding, Rejuvenate has established itself as a changemaker in the kidney space. Its first client tripled the number of employees whose lives were saved by transplant and reduced kidney failure costs by 30%.

“I’m an academic at heart,” says Rees. “And what do academics do? Try to find new truths that help us create a better future. That’s why I founded Rejuvenate. I wanted to create a better future for patients with kidney disease and a better future for companies that suffer from the financial burden of having to pay for that.”

If you’re a benefits director interested in saving healthcare costs and providing hope for those in your workforce with kidney failure, contact Rejuvenate Kidney Transplant Solutions to see how Dr. Rees and his team can help.