Local dialysis patients learn what to do in threat of hurricane
NaplesNews.com story by Liz Freeman, Friday, June 8, 2007
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/jun/08/local_dialysis_patients_learn_what_do_threat_hurri/?breaking_news
Sophia Hadley doesn’t fret about how she would get her dialysis treatment if all hell breaks loose with a hurricane striking Southwest Florida.
That’s because the 36-year-old is a patient at Naples Artificial Kidney Center, 3699 Airport-Pulling Road N., where the center’s social worker sits down with each patient before the June 1 start of hurricane season. The social worker goes over a detailed pre- and post-storm response plan, to assure patients that they will not go without their lifesaving dialysis, necessary three times a week.
“When hurricane season comes, they give us a list of things we need, they give us ideas of what we should eat and a list of the medicines and list with our (treatment) type,” said Hadley, who has been on dialysis 12 years.
Owned by the national company, Fresenius Medical Care North America, the Naples center and its other Southwest Florida affiliates have revamped their disaster plans since Hurricane Katrina, aiming to address the needs of both patients and employees so their dialysis operations can carry on.
A national competitor in the region, DaVita Inc., which has dialysis centers in Fort Myers and Naples, similarly has detailed hurricane plans.
The Florida Kidney Disaster Coalition has focused on developing a comprehensive disaster preparedness plan to address the needs of the 26,000 Floridians with kidney failure who require dialysis, said Sarah Knott, head social worker for Fresenius at the company’s office in Tampa. Knott previously worked in the company’s Southwest Florida clinics.
“The Kidney Disaster Coalition is to make sure all units, not just Fresenius, are prepared for hurricanes,” she said.
Besides the one-on-one sessions with each patient, Fresenius operates a toll-free number that is staffed 12 hours a day so patients and members of their families can locate a dialysis center near their place of evacuation and will make arrangements with the alternative site.
If a patient plans to go to a special-needs shelter, the clinics will register their patients with Collier County Emergency Management for the special-needs shelter, she said.
Before any of the dialysis centers shut down while a storm approaches, every patient undergoes a session, even if it is not his or her regular dialysis day.“So everyone is in good shape,” Knott said.
The centers don’t arrange for transportation but will coordinate transportation through the county for those who don’t have the means to get to a center after a storm. That was the case for some patients after Hurricane Wilma hit southern Collier County on Oct. 24, 2005.
“After Wilma, (the county) was very good about it,” she said. “They brought the patients to dialysis.”
In Fort Lauderdale, the Fresenius-owned Florida Kidney Center was the only dialysis center operational after Wilma in the region, taking in individuals from dialysis clinics run by other companies, she said.
All Fresenius-owned centers have generators that kick in when the electricity goes out and all have arrangements for water tank trucks to come on site and connect to a center’s water treatment system, said Todd Parker, the company’s regional technical manager for North Florida.
“We ran that way for a week right after Wilma at the Naples Artificial Kidney Center,” Knott said. “We took care of some patients from Clewiston and Belle Glade.”
Each generator runs $60,000 to $90,000 and each water hook-up system for the trucked-in tanks runs $500, Parker said.
In addition, the company has a logistics center at a warehouse with supplies and six recreational vehicles that can be sent to hurricane-damaged communities to house clinic employees whose homes have been damaged, he said.
“Previously we have put them right on the site (of the clinics),” Parker said of the RVs. “So we can take care of our own. Our focus is to get as much ready for recovery to create a little command center.”
DaVita Inc., which has five clinics in Fort Myers and one in Naples, likewise enhanced its hurricane plans after Katrina, said David McKenzie, a division vice president at the company’s Los Angeles headquarters.
“We have a little over 100 dialysis centers in the state of Florida,” he said.All patients are educated about the plan before the storm and all are given a wrist band with a toll-free number to call to get help and find out the nearest center that is open, he said. Patients are encouraged to evacuate if they can.
The larger clinics have permanent generators and there are 15 generators that can be trucked in to smaller clinics that have lost power, he said. The company has arrangements for water to be brought in but that hasn’t been a problem during the past storms in Florida.
“During a disaster, we literally take in all-comers — we don’t care where they come from,” he said. “Billing is not relevant at that time.”
Hadley, the Naples resident who is a patient at Fresenius-owned Naples Artificial Kidney Center, remembers her experience before and after Wilma. She didn’t evacuate and stayed in her Golden Gate home.
She received a dialysis session on Sunday, the day before Wilma made landfall, and had her next dialysis on Wednesday. By then, the center was off its generator and back on normal power.
“They assured us everything would be OK and prepared us,” she said. “I felt confident.”
She feels the same going into hurricane season now.
“Oh yes, I’m confident nothing will happen without reason,” she said. “I’m prepared.”
