Why Early CKD Screening is Important

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is one of the most underdiagnosed, and expensive, conditions in healthcare today.

Roughly 1 in 7 adults (~14%) have CKD, and nearly 90% don’t know it. Despite clear clinical guidelines that call for annual screening and well-established risk factors, early detection remains inconsistent in primary care. In fact, only ~20% of high-risk patients are properly screened, which means way too many individuals are advancing into later stages of the disease.

This isn’t a knowledge gap, but an execution gap, and it’s an expensive mistake to make. When CKD progresses to kidney failure, the consequences are shown here:

• Total dialysis spends range from $50 - $70 billion annually in the U.S.

• Kidney disease accounts for $130+ billion in Medicare spending each year.

• CKD and its related costs amount to almost 2% of the entire Federal budget.

This is one of the largest and most preventable cost burdens in the system.

Why Early Detection Matters

CKD develops silently, and therefore most patients experience no symptoms until significant kidney function has already been lost. Earlier detection creates a window to:

• slow disease progression

• better manage diabetes and hypertension

• reduce cardiovascular risk

• engage patients earlier in their care

From both a clinical and economic perspective, early screening is one of the highest-impact opportunities in chronic disease management, and today it matters more than ever.

So Why Is Screening Still Broken?

1.      Fragmented, multi-step workflows

Traditional testing pathways are not designed for efficiency. They often require:

• ordering lab tests

• sending patients off-site

• waiting days for results

• scheduling follow-up visits

Each additional step introduces friction and increases the likelihood that screening never gets completed.

2.      Loss to follow-up

Patients face real-world barriers:

• time constraints

• transportation challenges

• competing priorities

Even when tests are ordered, many are never completed. Others are completed, but patients don’t return to review results.

These gaps are where early detection breaks down.

3.      Competing priorities in primary care

Primary care providers operate under significant time pressure.

In short visits, immediate concerns often take precedence over preventive screening. CKD, a largely asymptomatic condition, is frequently deprioritized unless risk is already apparent.

4. Limited adoption of improved diagnostics

Advances in biomarkers, such as cystatin-C, can improve the accuracy and timeliness of kidney function assessment.

However, real-world adoption remains uneven due to:

• accessibility constraints

• reimbursement considerations

• added complexity within existing workflows

Even when better tools exist, they are not always practical to implement.

So Where This Is Going?

Healthcare systems are increasingly focused on:

• prevention

• value-based care

• population health management

CKD screening sits at the center of all three. There is growing demand for solutions that:

• streamline testing

• improve access

• integrate seamlessly into primary care workflows

The ability to identify patients earlier, and act sooner, will be critical to improving outcomes at scale.

Conclusion

The challenge is not a lack of awareness or guidelines, it is that current screening approaches do not align with how care is delivered. When screening depends on multiple steps, delayed results, additional patient effort, it becomes unreliable and the data supports this.

This is a huge problem because early screening is one of the most important and impactful opportunities in chronic kidney disease management. Therefore, addressing real-world barriers to implementation will be critical to ensuring that more patients are identified and supported before irreversible kidney damage occurs.

We hope to do that with our device, MATLOC.