Dialysis center to stay on hospital campus Dialysis center to stay on hospital campus (August 13, 2004)

Public comments influenced decision on new building

By Julie O'Shea

Four months after El Camino Hospital officials announced they were thinking of moving the dialysis center to an off-site location, they unveiled plans last week to keep the service on the Grant Road campus.

El Camino board trustees have retained a firm to begin the design process of a new two-story, 30,000-square-foot building at the corner of South and Hospital drives where the new dialysis center will be housed.

The hospital board last week approved $400,000 for the initial phase of the project.

Construction is slated to begin early next year and the building should be completed by summer, hospital spokesperson Judy Twitchell said.

"This is going to be sort of a fast-track project," she said.

The hospital's decision came in response to dozens of angry emails and phone calls from patients complaining that relocating the dialysis center, which treats patients with kidney diseases by removing waste and excess fluid from their blood, would be too inconvenient for their frequent visits.

The patients, Twitchell added, "were very concerned, and we listened." The dialysis center has about 175 patients who use its facility one or more times a week.

El Camino officials said last spring that the move was needed because plans to construct a new $300-million hospital call for the demolition of the Oak Pavilion, which currently houses the dialysis center. One site the hospital was said to be considering was located along busy Highway 237.

However, CEO Lee Domanico, in a July 30 memo to the hospital board, stated, "We were able to develop an on-campus option that fits into our site master plan quite effectively."

The center will occupy about 12,000 square feet of the new two-story building on the southeast corner of the hospital campus. The top floor of the facility will be used for administrative offices.

"I should tell you that everyone, every person in the dialysis center -- the patients, doctors and staff -- they are so happy about this reversal of this decision. It saved many lives," said Valeria Milman, whose husband visits the center six days a week. "Executives do not like public pressure. Public pressure was very, very important (here). A lot of people wrote to them."

E-mail Julie O'Shea at joshea@mv-voice.com

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