Before County Dialysis opened in Presque Isle in 1997, Aroostook County residents with kidney failure would have to carpool to Bangor three days a week or move downstate. At least a few opted to forgo the blood-cleaning treatment and died much earlier than they had to.
Now, after almost 20 years at their original clinic, the patients and staff of The Aroostook Medical Center-run County Dialysis are settling into a new facility next door, with ample sunlight, modern equipment, and welcome change to the dialysis experience.
“Being on dialysis is a life-changing experience” said Orpheus Allison, a dialysis patient from Mapleton at an open house celebration Sept. 22. “You do not know when you will be required to give up your ordinary, everyday life and submit to the torture of dialysis. It is a process that you undergo three days a week, four hours of sitting very still, while machines clean your blood.”
While dialysis isn’t a cure, Allison said, “you can not only survive but have a very wonderful life, you can participate and enjoy life, and you can last for a long time.”
The new dialysis center opened in June next door to the old facility in the North Street Healthcare mall. Almost twice as large as the old location, the space has new equipment, painted skies on the ceilings, and an enclosed dialysis station for patients with blood-borne pathogens, who would otherwise have had to go to Bangor.
“It was a good facility and has done more than its share of labor,” said TAMC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jay Reynolds, mentioning that the former space was originally designed to last only 10 years.
County Dialysis is the only nonprofit dialysis center is Maine and among the top 10 percent of dialysis centers in the country with a five-star quality rating by federal health authorities, Reynolds said.
Allison, who was diagnosed with kidney failure while working as an educator in Guangzhou, China, also praised the staff at County Dialysis. “To be a kidney nurse, you need to know how every system in the body functions, and not only be able to know it, but recall it,” he said. “If they can survive working in the kidney department, they are some of the top of the top.”
Since it opened, County Dialysis’ patients have quadrupled to 46 as of late September, and many are part of a community relying on the treatment and the nurses and other workers who make it run smoothly – starting shortly after 5:15 a.m. six days a week. The center also serves a small stream of patients who are visiting the region and schedule dialysis for a short term.
Most years County Dialysis operates at a loss of “several hundred thousand dollars,” said Gene Lynch, president of Lynox Welding Supply and chair of the TAMC board.
Nonprofit dialysis centers like County Dialysis remain only in some parts of the country, Lynch said. Two for-profit companies now account for two-thirds of all dialysis services.
To pay for the new space, TAMC and County Dialysis launched a capital campaign seeking to raise $750,000 for the new space, and have about $250,000 left to go. There are also some other financial challenges that small centers like County Dialysis encounter, Lynch said.
In one case, he said, “Our supplier has increased our pricing many times over what we used to pay when we were part of a buying group.”
