September 17, 2008
Dirty, "Repulsive" Dialysis Center Shut Down
Having to go on dialysis is bad enough, but patients who received their treatment at Life Care Dialysis Center on West 61st Street have it even worse; at least one of them contracted Hepatitis C thanks to contaminated equipment! After inspecting the place last month, the Health Department shut it down, noting that employees failed to wash their hands, disinfect equipment or change gloves between patients. A spokesperson for the DOH tells the Times, “It was repulsive. The treatment chairs that they gave people to relax in had someone else’s dried blood on them.” On Monday the state’s health commissioner sent letters to 657 patients of the clinic urging them to get tested for hepatitis C, hepatitis B and H.I.V. Dr. Walter Wasser, the clinic’s operator and medical director, was fined $300,000 and could also lose his medical license, the Times reports.
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:^O
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awww, look at that sweet old man in the picture getting dialysis treatement, how nice...wait...OH MY GOD HE'S GETTING AIDS!!! ;^O
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This is totally random, but reading that was depressing-having to go get dialysis regularly must be heavy enough, having to get it in filthy conditions just sounds unbearable. And getting sick from the equipment...yeesh. It's sickening that they were treated that way and that they couldn't afford anything better. And that that doctor felt that's all they deserved.
I am feeling very bleeding heart all of a sudden. Sorry about that.
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This is absolutely disgusting. ugh. Contracting Hep C from a dirty needle. I would feel so violated.
I hope this guy gets a lot more than 300k
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I've blogged pretty extensively about this on Dialysis from the Sharp End of the Needle www.billpeckham.com
It isn't just Life Care. If you or someone that you love facing or on Dialysis, educate yourself.
There are plenty of on line resources out there. When you have a chronic illness, you have to be proactive. It is your life.
I was a patient at Davita Life Care, and the press is rather dramatic, but the fact is that the whole industry needs to be cleaned up, not just this one unit. Life Care is the tip of the iceberg.
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Do you wonder why there's a storefront dialysis center in virtually every neighborhood in the city?
There are a tremendous number of people with kidney failure, between diabetes, hypertension, HIV and other diseases that harm the kidneys. That has created a tremendous market for outpatient dialysis.
Enter entrepreneurial physicians, usually nephrologists. You've got a patient needing a treatment every weekday for the rest of his/her life and you've got an incredible potential for big income. Regulators have turned their attention from dialysis centers, figuring they could get more bang for their bucks by going after hospitals and other larger facilities. This place would have gone on for years delivering dialysis in squalor had they not gotten careless and ignored common infection control guidelines. I really don't know the details, but I don't need to know them: someone got Hep C, a deadly disease, from the dialysis center. Should not happen. Probably happening in other centers, too.
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This is why you don't get dialysis over 65 in the UK, at least on NHS.
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Holy shit! That is (was) my kidney specialist!