Northwest Kidney Centers Reports Success in Meeting Challenges of Just-Completed Year

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Nov 16, 2011, 12:30 ET

SEATTLE, Nov. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Northwest Kidney Centers closed its 2011 fiscal year with quality measures above the national averages and a solid financial performance that enables it to deliver significant benefits back to the community. The nonprofit achieved these outcomes in the face of the most sweeping changes in federal regulations in 40 years.

In 2011 Medicare introduced new clinical and financial requirements for kidney dialysis, affecting care for every patient. Northwest Kidney Centers responded with a systematic and successful effort to improve patient care while aligning payment and costs, wrote president and CEO Joyce F. Jackson in the just-released 2011 Annual Report. The year also saw the appointment of Dr. Suhail Ahmad as chief medical officer and new medical directors at five dialysis centers.

Patient care, education, research. Northwest Kidney Centers provided more than 226,000 dialysis treatments in its 14 centers and in 11 local hospitals as well as many treatments in homes, offices and on vacation by patients trained to do it themselves. The organization expanded its free classes for people with serious kidney disease and introduced new services for those who have received a kidney transplant. The 3-year-old Kidney Research Institute, a collaboration between Northwest Kidney Centers and UW Medicine, continues to add knowledge to the field that will improve the lives of kidney patients.

Fifty years, first in the world. In 2012 Northwest Kidney Centers will become the first dialysis provider anywhere to celebrate a half-century of service. In preparation, the organization updated its brand. See the new look in the annual report online at www.nwkidney.org/annualreport or request a printed copy from [email protected].

Northwest Kidney Centers is one of very few community based, nonprofit dialysis providers in the country. Founded in 1962 in Seattle, it was the first out-of-hospital dialysis program in the world, and is still a model in the field. Its mission remains critical. One in seven American adults has chronic kidney disease, up 30 percent in the last decade. For more information, visit www.nwkidney.org.

SOURCE Northwest Kidney Centers