Financial incentives to promote prolonged renal graft survival: potential for patients and public health.

Non-adherence to immune modulating agents is the single most common cause of renal graft rejection and failure with not only devastating consequences for patients, but also increased dialysis and transplant organ demands causing substantial medical expenses. Financial incentives used to reward and promote patient compliance with immune modulating therapy and post transplantation management could constitute a motivation that might increase renal graft survival, and thereby improve individual patient outcome as well as alleviate public health spending for renal replacement therapy.