Brookdale Senior Living announced that the company would be partnering with Dialyze Direct to provide on-site dialysis at four of its CCRC campuses in Texas. Two of the locations began offering the service earlier this year, but one campus in Houston will open a Dialyze Direct suite with eight chairs this week, and the other property in Austin will start the service soon. This is just one of several expansions of on-site dialysis into senior care facilities that we have seen recently.
Azria Health, which just bought a portfolio of 15 skilled nursing facilities in the Midwest from Senior Housing Properties Trust, also recently partnered with Concerto Renal Services to offer dialysis to its residents at its Olathe, Kansas facility. The agreement is the first of its kind in Kansas and marks Concerto’s entry in the Kansas/Missouri market. Its presence may grow even more in the Midwest if the partnership grows to include Azria’s recently-acquired portfolio.
Last month, Autumn Lake Healthcare also partnered with Concerto to provide on-site dialysis services at its skilled nursing facility in Baltimore, Maryland, which is just the latest SNF partnership in the state for Concerto since its acquisition of Home Dialysis of Maryland in June 2019.
Providing dialysis services in the community, as opposed to transporting residents to the dialysis center, seems like a no-brainer for both the skilled nursing and senior living industries. It cuts down on cost and provides a better experience for the resident, both themes that skilled nursing and senior living providers ought to be embracing to widen their appeal to both payors and potential residents. Not to mention, it also provides another source of revenue that can help offset the rising cost of labor.
The service probably won’t side-step senior living communities for too long either, especially if the sector is to capitalize on its role in the health care cost solution. The economics of providing on-site dialysis versus driving your residents elsewhere for it is, of course, important to the community’s owner. But with all that high-end senior living communities spend on luxury amenities, an on-site dialysis suite may be a more useful allocation of dollars too.
