I’m on in center HD and travel a few times per year. I think the in center might be easier to coordinate since I don’t need supplies but also harder because I have to be in a center every two days. I believe that technically with PD you could do manual exchanges and not need to be tied to a center. For PD they probably will help ship around the supplies you need and find coordinate with backup centers that will take you if you run into trouble.
How I go about planning:
Book international airfare about six months in advance, and figure out where I want to go. Once I know where we are going I start goggling around to figure out what centers can be found. Usually I search for “Holiday Dialysis Madrid” etc…
I also search on Global Dialysis center search to see if there are centers with reviews and good contact information. It seems like NephroCare (Fresenius) has the best global websites, usually just NephroCare and the country code, so nephrocare.es = Spain, nephrocare.pt = Portugal etc… and when I find the sites from Google the results are in English even on the country sites so I’ve used their centers a lot.
Then I try to book the centers. I’m with DaVita so I use their Travel Support services about 50% of the time when I travel. Otherwise when the center has good contact information I sometimes do the setup myself asking for my center or dr to help with the documentation and labs required. For US travel my center’s admin helps me and I usually just email her.
I find coordination via DaVita more worrisome, they try hard but somehow finalization of plans take longer than when I do it and I’ve been in situations where I’m a week out from traveling and don’t have final chair times. But then I ask them for help where there are language issues etc…
Prices generally are around $200/session for HD and my insurance pays 50% after I submit it because I’ve not yet paid all my out of network deductible. However Canada and Belgium were both over $600/session. Portugal was the cheapest at $110 at one Nephrocare center in a hospital and $170 at a DaVita center.
From
http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=33724.0