Dialysis center proposed for city - Danville Commercial News PDF Print

Posted: Tuesday, March 24, 2015 6:49 am

DANVILLE — There will be a public hearing Wednesday regarding a new proposed dialysis center that has letters filed already in support and opposing the new facility.

This would be a second dialysis center for the community. Danville Dialysis Services is located on Clay Street near Presence United Samaritans Medical Center.

Vermilion County Dialysis, an eight-station End State Renal Dialysis facility, is proposed in 4,790 square feet of space at 22 W. Newell Road in Danville. The new building is proposed on a Danville Crossings area lot consisting of a little more than 1 acre.

The $3 million project’s applicants to the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board is DaVita Healthcare Partners Inc., Total Renal Care Inc. and Genesis KC Development, LLC.

A public hearing on the project will begin at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Danville City Council chambers, 17 W. Main St. Sign-in for the hearing will be from 1-1:30 p.m.

Justin Forbis, a communications contact with DaVita, said there is no guarantee that a new center would come to Danville.

“It’s too early to tell,” he said about specific project plans. “It still must get approved by the state.”

Forbis said that’s why there was an application for a certificate of need for the project. If they prove the need is great in the community, the facility could be built.

“The public hearing will help decide whether there is a need,” he said.

Consideration by the state board has been tentatively scheduled for April 21. Any person wanting to submit written comments on the project must submit them by April 1. The state board will post its findings in a state board staff report. The report will be made available via the Internet on April 7 via the website www.hfsrb.illinois.gov.

The application for the proposed facility states that there is sufficient patient population to justify the need for the facility.

Application information states that “the purpose of the project is to improve access to life-sustaining dialysis services to the residents of the Danville community. There is currently one existing dialysis facility within 30 minutes of the proposed Vermilion County Dialysis, which was operating at 61.4 percent of the quarter ending Sept. 30, 2014. Despite the low utilization, access issues exist within the Danville community. Specifically, no existing facility will admit patients without insurance or do not have permanent access, i.e. AV fistula. These patients must travel 40 minutes to Champaign three times per week for their dialysis treatment.”

Also, according to the application, Dr. Abdel-Moneim Mohamed Abdou Attia’s practice, within the division of nephrology of the Carle Physician Group, treated 238 chronic kidney disease patients in the first half of 2014, with 196 of the patients residing within approximately 20 minutes of Danville. Of those patients, 139 live in Danville. Conservatively, based upon attrition due to patient death, transplant, return of function, or relocation, Attia anticipates that at least 39 of these patients will initiate dialysis at the proposed facility within 12 to 24 months following project completion.

The facility also will serve DaVita’s Danville home hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis patients requiring an in-center treatment. DaVita has grown its Danville home program to 24 patients.

Attia will serve as medical director for the proposed facility. It also would have about seven initial staff members.

Attia’s support letter for DaVita’s proposed establishment of the Vermilion County Dialysis states that facility will directly benefit his patients, and DaVita is a leading provider of dialysis services in the U.S.

Two letters of opposition state that they oppose the application by Vermilion County Dialysis to build another dialysis facility in Danville because Danville Dialysis Services has room for additional patients and a new facility in the city isn’t needed.

The new facility also may put Danville Dialysis Services out of business, the letters state.

A letter from Dr. Thomas Halloran, who has practiced internal medicine in Danville during the last 30 years, states he’s made many referrals to Dr. Brijnandan Sodhi and Sodhi’s Danville Dialysis Unit.

“Over all of that time, my patients have without fail benefitted from Dr. Sodhi’s expert and compassionate care in his nephrology practice and dialysis center. There has never been a barrier to referral, nor anything but exemplary care rendered,” Halloran states.

Halloran said he opposes the granting of permission to build a second dialysis center here because: timely and excellent care is already available to meet all of the dialysis needs in the Danville area; Dr. Sodhi’s unit has capacity to accommodate more patients; diluting the available dialysis services would provide economic challenges to each of the units and he fears both might fail, leaving the area with no critical dialysis services; Dr. Sodhi provides excellent nephrology care at Presence USMC for their mutual patients, including hospital dialysis services. Should his unit be put out of business, he would likely not be available to tend for these critical patient’s needs at PUSMC either; and a nephrologist at a competing unit likely would not be living in Danville, and hence not eligible to become a member of Provena USMC’s medical staff, since bylaws require local residence. Patients requiring inpatient dialysis would require transfer to a tertiary medical center out of town, removing them from the care of their primary care physicians in their local hospital.

“Granting such an application would unnecessarily and concerningly dilute dialysis services in Danville, and have deleterious consequences regarding our local hospital and for our patients deserving care close to home,” Halloran stated.

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