June 20 was not only a very special day for the residents at Beth Abraham Center on Allerton Avenue in the Bronx, but also for the entire Allerton Avenue community.
The 448-bed skilled nursing facility introduced its brand new, state-of-the-art Beth Abraham Center for Renal Dialysis to the public with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and lunch. The opening of this is very special center comes at a time when a number of nearby dialysis centers have closed its doors in recent months, namely one on Pelham Parkway South that was affiliated with Jacobi Medical Center (US Renal Care Pelham Parkway Dialysis Center) until its June 17 closure.
Equipped with 23 stations that could accommodate 150 patients, the center is opened six days a week, Monday through Saturday. Patients have many options on when they could come and the facility adheres to a patient’s work schedule if necessary. Patients would receive in-center hemodialysis treatment three days a week, either two ways: one could be Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Each session would be on the average of three to four hours depending on what each patient’s medical diagnosis is, along with their needs.
The new center is also designed for people in the Allerton Avenue community to come to the suite and avoid making their way through Beth Abraham Center, as there is an access to a separate entrance on Bronx Park East when they arrive.
The administrator for the Beth Abraham Center for Renal Dialysis, 30-year Registered Nurse Annette Hyde, who has worked with patients requiring hemodialysis treatment for 20 years, knows and understands that patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage renal disease are going through a major change in life in order to get better.
“We know that the two most common etiologies of kidney failure are diabetes and hypertension, so even though that these two etiologies are preventable, the kidneys can be affected and when that happens, it can be a serious matter,” said Hyde.
Hyde also said that the Beth Abraham Center for Renal Dialysis offers the flexibility of at-home treatment in which patients would receive training to perform treatment at home. The center would then provide monitoring and oversight. The patients would need to have a dialysis cycler, a smaller unit than what is provided at the center. Patients would receive a full education on how to do the injection, monitor themselves, document their treatment and the oversight provided by the center can be done remotely.
“Our responsibility is to make sure that oversight is being done with the at-home patients and they are doing it safely,” said Hyde.
These patients are required though to come to the facility once a month to meet with our interdisciplinary team that include the physician, nurse, social worker, and dietician for an overall assessment on how they are doing. Vice versa, the Center is required to do a home visit to make sure the home is suitable for dialysis and it remains that way over time.
“All in all, the collaboration between the patient, family and the dialysis team is essential for at-home dialysis success,” Hyde added.
Jack Meisels, Centers Dialysis Care’s chief operating officer, said that the coming of this new Beth Abraham Center Dialysis location is not only innovative, but it offers comfortability for patients who will spend many hours at the center, as they come three times a week.
“Each of the chairs in all of the 23 stations are equipped with heat and massage and the patients have access to Smart TVs with internet, so spending time here to be treated is done with comfortable in mind,” said Meisels. “It is not a closed-in effect whatsoever, it’s spacious and for a very sterile environment, the suite is unique because of the large size that it is. We are all about the patients and for them to get better.”
