Shutdown of dialysis site raises questions

Shutdown of dialysis site raises questions
By Lola Sherman (Contact) Union-Tribune Staff Writer

2:00 a.m. March 7, 2009

NORTH COUNTY — A $436,000 kidney dialysis center at Tri-City Medical Center has sat vacant since last summer, its shutdown unnoticed by the board of the public hospital district.

Tri-City board President RoseMarie Reno said this week that she wants to know why the board wasn't told that the center had closed. Other directors didn't contradict Reno's assertion at a public meeting that the board was unaware that the company leasing the building had left.

Officials at the Tri-City Healthcare District, which operates Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, also say they don't know what happened to the equipment that was in the building.

The center operated in a free-standing, 6,000-square-foot structure at Vista Way and Thunder Drive, on the southeast corner of the hospital property. The 25-year-old facility initially was run by Tri-City, but in 1998 the district signed a 10-year lease with Fresenius Medical Care, a German company with North American headquarters in Waltham, Mass.

The district couldn't provide a copy of the lease this week.

Fresenius area manager Mary Brattich said any medical equipment in the building at the time the lease was signed would have been transferred to the company.

“Our relationship with Tri-City was that they were our landlord – we owned everything” in the clinic, Brattich said, adding that any medical equipment from that time would be out of date now.

Dr. James Ramenofsky, former director of Tri-City's dialysis operations, said Fresenius moved to a larger facility on Hacienda Drive in Vista.

Ramenofsky said he doesn't know what happened to the equipment.

Tri-City still provides inpatient dialysis. The treatment, often needed as frequently as once a day, cleans the blood of impurities when diseased kidneys no longer can.

The Fresenius move occurred before the new board majority voted in December to put hospital Chief Executive Arthur Gonzalez and seven other top officials on administrative leave.

Hospital officials said answers concerning the dialysis center would be known only by the administrators put on leave.

The loss of Fresenius as a tenant also means a loss of income to Tri-City, which is struggling with a possible loss of $8.7 million in revenue by June 30.

Reno, the board president, said she also wants to know what happened to the equipment, which was bought with donations.

Over the years, local philanthropists including the late John Cosh and Edgar Jones, both of Vista, donated money for the equipment.

“It still leaves questions in my mind,” said Jones' widow, Jo Anne Jones. “What happened to the equipment? Why was the board not told?”

Larry Anderson, who was hired as Tri-City's interim chief executive in January, discussed the empty building at a recent district board meeting, saying he wants to move the human resources department out of its offices in the medical center basement.

By moving that department to the vacant building, a cardiovascular institute could be established in the basement space, Anderson said.

The 10-year lease to Fresenius was a campaign issue in 1998, when board candidate Lawson Chadwick opposed private operation of the publicly funded dialysis center.

Election winner Ron Mitchell, who's still a Tri-City board member, said it would be more economical. He didn't return phone calls for comment.

Lola Sherman: (760) 476-8241; lola.sherman@uniontrib.com

Lola Sherman: (760) 476-8241; (Contact)