A new outpatient dialysis unit opened at the Faulkner Hospital Campus on May 23. Ajay Singh, MD, will serve as the medical director of the unit. For the first time, BWH will have its own facility to provide dialysis on an outpatient basis. Formerly, staff physicians at BWH referred patients who needed dialysis to independent sites near Faulkner. And Faulkner, which had provided outpatient dialysis at a two-station unit located in its main hospital, will have expanded capacity to serve more patients. Inpatient dialysis will continue at both hospitals in their current facilities.
In addition to serving patients whose physicians are on the BWH/Faulkner staff, the new outpatient unit will attract other renal patients who find the Jamaica Plain location convenient. The dialysis unit is among several integrated services created since the two hospitals merged in 1998, including joint programs in surgery, orthopedic care, vein care, weight-loss management, asthma and psychiatry.
The unit is located in the Belkin House, a building near Faulkner’s front entrance. It comprises 15 hemodialysis stations for the treatment of more than 100 patients who will come for dialysis three times per week, with each visit lasting up to four hours. On the ground floor of the new unit is a clinic for patients whose blood is cleansed by peritoneal dialysis, in which a surgically implanted device is flushed and maintained by the patient on a daily basis. These patients routinely need monthly follow-up visits.
The unit will be operated and staffed by Dialysis Clinic Inc. (DCI), a nonprofit organization, which manages more than 165 dialysis units nationwide and has a large presence in academic centers. “Any surpluses generated by the unit are channeled directly back to the local hospitals to support research and clinical care,” said Singh. For example, DCI-supported research at BWH is currently under way to understand why postmenopausal women on dialysis are at high risk for cardiovascular events. Another study is examining factors that contribute to kidney transplant rejection.