A new free-standing outpatient center in Denver is designed to help patients with chronic and end-stage kidney disease, including those who need dialysis, save time and avoid inconvenience by staying out of the hospital for vital services, freeing up space and capacity for sicker patients at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and other hospitals.
The product of several years of planning and effort, the Lowry Renal Center was spearheaded by nephrologist Michel Chonchol, M.D., chief of the CU Department of Medicine’s Division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension. The center is a joint venture of the renal division and the medical school’s departments of surgery, radiology, and anesthesiology.
The 10,000-square-foot center, located four miles southwest of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, partially opened in May to perform interventional radiology procedures and dialysis. A renal clinic is slated to launch early next year.
Chonchol says there is no other full-service ambulatory surgical center focused on renal care in Colorado.
“The patients can get the services they need at one site outside the hospital, without missing a beat. This center is really a one-stop shop for everything,” he said, adding that “one of the biggest needs for this is that hospitals are very busy with acute and tertiary care typically requiring hospital admission, and some other patients who need a more immediate but lower level of care were not able to receive treatment in a timely fashion. Because hospitals are so busy, it might take four or five hours there for a procedure that should usually take one hour, and then maybe they miss their dialysis treatment. So the idea was to free up space for sicker patients at the hospital, and at the same time provide better care in the community.”
“The chronic kidney disease population and the end-stage renal disease population are growing, and the ability to get these people in and cared for in a timely, thoughtful way is a scheduling and logistical challenge within all hospital systems,” said Peter Kennealey, M.D., the center’s medical director, in a statement.
In addition to ESRD patients needing dialysis, the center will treat chronic kidney disease patients advancing toward dialysis, Chonchol said. “There’s a lot of care before dialysis, and if you provide better care during the latter stages of chronic kidney disease, the patient does better once dialysis is initiated.”
As of late June, the center’s dialysis unit had about 60 patients receiving dialysis on site and another 20 undergoing home dialysis, Chonchol said. The surgery unit will see about six patients per day of operation, and the interventional radiologists will do about 12 procedures daily. Plans for the renal unit opening next year are for 100 patients a month.
