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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid presented Dr. Clifford Sales, MD and the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS), with a Certificate of Appreciation for extraordinary dedication and outstanding contributions for his work on the Fistula First Breakthrough Initiative. Sales and the SVS team work on the initiative to increase the proportion of hemodialysis patients with arteriovenous fistulas.

"We have been successful because of the ‘reputational equity’ of people on our team," said Sales. Michael Belkin, MD; Michael Lilly, MD; Harry Schanzer, MD; Anton Sidawy, MD, and Robert Zwolak, MD serve on the Fistula First Coalition with Sales.

In 2004 the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services introduced the Fistula First Breakthrough Initiative for the purpose of significantly increasing the use of native arteriovenous fistulas (AVF) for hemodialysis access. The initiative engaged vascular surgeons, nephrologists, dialysis facilities, primary care physicians and patients in changing practices to assure that AVFs are the first choice for every eligible patient in order to improve the quality of care provided to Medicare beneficiaries suffering from end-stage renal disease.

The goal of the Fistula First Initiative is to more than double the percentage of patients with fistulas to 66 percent by 2009. The 2004 national average was 29 percent for incident patients and 31 percent for prevalent patients.