DaVita closes another dialysis unit

By Michael Fraase

Wednesday, 17 September 2008 08:32PM CST

Section:

Medical moneyA DaVita dialysis facility in Manhattan voluntarily shut down after the New York State Health Department found blood on equipment, unsatisfactory staff behavior, and at least one patient who had contracted hepatitis C as a result of the facility’s unsanitary conditions. More than 650 patients were instructed to get hepatitis and HIV tests. And 171 patients were forced to seek treatment elsewhere.

The facility’s medical director, Walter Wesser, was fined US$300,000, lost his operating certification, and faces revocation of his medical license.

When the DaVita facility was inspected last month—as a follow-up to previous violations—the Health Department found that employees regularly failed to wash their hands properly, didn’t change gloves between patients, and didn’t correctly disinfect equipment.

Interestingly, the Anemona Hartocollis’s report for the New York Times fails to identify the facility as owned by DaVita. Anna Bennett’s accounts for Dialysis from the sharp end of the needle (Bennett was a patient at the closed Manhattan DaVita facility) are much better written and more compelling.

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