Patients affected by higher gas prices

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Patients affected by higher gas prices
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
By Monetta L. Harr
mharr@citpat.com -- 768-4972

Imagine having a four-hour dialysis appointment, then waiting up to three hours in the lobby, nauseated, for your ride home.

It can get tiring, especially for someone like Josephine Young of Summit Township, who has done it three times a week for nearly six years.

Young, 69, was one of a handful of patients at Jackson Dialysis, 234 W. Louis Glick Highway, who talked to U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, on Tuesday about public transportation issues and the soaring price of gasoline.

Young, who uses either a wheelchair or walker, relies on Jackson Transportation Authority's Reserve-A-Ride.

Walberg also visited the American Red Cross, 3425 Francis St., where he heard from Executive Director Karen Randall and board members about the effects high gasoline prices have on the agency.

Randall said emergency services volunteers -- the people trained to immediately respond to help people in a fire, accident or other disaster -- have started using their own money to pay for gasoline to get there and back.

Walberg supports legislation that would seek more drilling for oil in the United States -- including Alaska -- and encourages investment in new nuclear power plants.

At the dialysis center, there are 21 chairs for patients, and those are ``flipped'' three times a day.

``We have more than our share of transportation issues,'' Diane French, regional operations director, told Walberg.

``I don't care if it is cardiac, cancer, whatever chronic disease, public transportation is our biggest obstacle. If a patient's children tries to bring them, they may lose their job so that doesn't work either,'' said French, who oversees 15 dialysis centers between Ann Arbor and Ludington.

Jackson Transportation Authority only travels into more rural areas of the county on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, where an estimated 30 percent of Jackson Dialysis Center clients live. So those people must be scheduled those days for dialysis.

``We hope they don't bleed a lot so they can get out of here by 4 p.m.,'' said Peggy Winters, a social worker. ``Many of our clients are in wheelchairs, they have diabetes and they are elderly. If they also have an incontinence problem, that's a long time to wait to get to a bathroom.''

An even bigger dilemma, Winters and French said, is patients who miss their rides.

``We are on the phone looking for them because they can end up in a hospital on dialysis. And the sicker they feel, they use it as an excuse not to come in. We can't accept that. We need to figure out alternatives. There is no easy answer to this,'' Winters said.

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