DaVita Renal Care knew it would have to get creative as a blizzard bore down on Western New York last December and stopped travel across the region for several days.
The West Seneca clinic served 47 patients who needed dialysis three days per week.
“Someone can go for five days without dialysis – most people can who have end-stage renal disease,” said Dr. Richard Quigg, clinic medical director. “You go beyond that, then you start to have problems that you can’t undo.”
The DaVita staff had to improvise. They opened early Friday as the blizzard gathered steam and treated all of their 60 dialysis patients, regardless of whether they normally had an appointment on Fridays. More than half made it back on Tuesday and the clinic was pretty close to normal by Wednesday.
“We knew in advance what was going to happen, so we planned as best we could,” said Quigg, also chief of the Division of Nephrology in the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.
Thanks in large part to the clinic staff’s quick thinking, DaVita’s dialysis patients all managed to weather the storm. But there may be an easier way for some of those dialysis patients – as well others with pressing medical needs – to get care they need during future blizzards: special needs shelters equipped to help those who need specialized care and medical equipment that requires electricity.
Many counties in Florida, including Miami-Dade and Broward, open and provide transportation to special needs shelters during hurricanes and other disasters. People who may need the shelters are encouraged to apply in advance and treat them as a “last resort” if they have no other options.
Special needs shelters have found their way north, too. Suffolk County has a similar program in place for natural disasters.
The City of Buffalo established several daytime warming shelters for the general population during the December blizzard, but two of…
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