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By early summer of 2016 at the latest, dialysis patients from the mid-valley should have an entirely new facility where they can receive treatments.
Construction is expected to start within a week on a 13,000-square-foot dialysis clinic that eventually will replace the current facility on Seventh Avenue, next to Samaritan Albany General Hospital.
Like the current site, the new clinic, called the Albany Fresenius Dialysis Center, will provide total treatment for dialysis patients. It will also be a training base for technicians and nurses throughout the mid-valley.
“Part of the facility will be an education center,” said Sharon Gillespie, director of marketing for PCI HealthDev, the developer of the site. “This will be an area center.”
The center will have 14 dialysis stations and will be just about double the size of the Seventh Street location. The size will give the center room to grow. Training facilities will host educational sessions every three weeks.
Gillespie said the building offers options for additional stations and more room overall.
Crews from Nelson and Morris Construction out of Costa Mesa, California, are preparing to set up footings. According to Terri J. Plunkett-Kalmey, who is managing the construction site, the goal is to have the building shell raised by October.
“We want it to be up before winter,” Plunkett-Kalmey said. “Then we can work on the interior.”
Nicole McClure of Samaritan will manage the new site, and Diane Jones will work with home dialysis patients. Jones will have a training room to teach home patients how to do their own dialysis.
“It will help us give them more freedom,” Jones said.
McClure said that dialysis patients usually come in for treatment three times a week and spend three to four hours per day at the machines, which mechanically filter blood for patients whose kidneys can no longer do the job.
“It is a labor-intensive process,” McClure said.
The clinic will have a staff of around 20, but that could change if growth is necessary.
Fresenius handles almost all dialysis patients in Albany and has had a presence in the area for more than 20 years. In 2011 the company added Corvallis, Lebanon and Newport.
Casey Stowell, who previously worked at the Seventh Avenue clinic and is now a regional vice president for Fresenius, said that the North Albany site will be one of the larger clinics.
The clinic is next to the Corvallis Clinic at North Albany Village.
Pedro Juan Vergne-Morell said that, ideally, the building will be completed by May of next year.
PCI and Nelson and Morris Construction have built several other clinics in the Northwest. Once the new clinic is up and running, Stowell said patients will transition from the current clinic to the new facility.
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