Dialysis providers limit impact of Texas flooding on patient care

Only two dialysis clinics in the Houston and Austin, Texas area had to be closed this past week in response to tremendous flooding that killed at least 13 people. Eleven are still missing.

DaVita Kidney Care closed down one of its Houston clinics and one near Austin because of the flooding, but transferred those patients to other units.

“As the result of the Texas floods, DaVita had two full closures of centers —one in Houston and one in Taylor, Texas (northeast of Austin),” said Tom Bradsell, manager of the DaVita Village Emergency Response Team. “We also had several other centers where we had either delayed openings or the elimination of some shifts as the result of the adverse weather conditions."

“This event came quickly and we immediately responded by contacting patients in flooded areas to make sure they were okay. For those patients in areas where center operations were impacted, we worked quickly to find centers where they could receive their treatments and shifted clinical teammates to those centers to accommodate the increase in patients. In some centers we also added a shift to accommodate the increase in patients,” Bradsell said.

DaVita, along with Fresenius Medical Care North America and U.S. Renal Care, treat the most outpatient dialysis patients in Texas who are in the Medicare-funded ESRD Program. Spokespersons for those providers said that while dialysis services were disrupted, the clinics continued to operate.

The flooding in Dallas and Houston has caused over $45 million in property damage, officials estimate. -by Mark Neumann