Inpatient Dialysis
Western Nephrology began practice in 1963 providing consultative services to Lutheran Medical Center and St. Anthony Central Hospitals. In 1973 the practice expanded to provide both inpatient and outpatient dialysis services.
Western Nephrology provides inpatient dialysis services to 8 hospitals and 2 rehabilitation hospitals in the Northwest Denver Metropolitan area and Boulder County.
The inpatient dialysis team consists of 20 staff members, including registered nurses and technicians. The team provides 24 hour a day, 7 days a week coverage to our hospitals. Dialysis services include intermittent hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, continuous renal replacement therapies, and plasmapheresis techniques. Our team of skilled nurses and technicians performs, on average, greater than 6000 individual treatments annually. Current equipment includes the Gambro Phoenix dialysis machine for intermittent hemodialysis, and the Gambro PRISMA machine for continuous therapies and plasmapheresis.
In addition our staff and physicians provide in-services and educational support to nursing, pharmacy and other hospital staff. Our own staff in turn participates in regular educational inservices directed at challenging issues in clinical care as well as technical aspects of dialysis care.
To the hospitals we serve we provide quarterly reports on quality assurance indicators and CQI projects. Substantial recent CQI projects have included outcomes in acute renal failure, adequacy of dialysis in acute renal failure, dialysis catheter complications, and testing of new technologies such as a recently completed FDA study of plasmapheresis with the PRISMA dialysis machine.
Our nurse manager is directly involved in JCAHO documentation and inspections.
Western Nephrology is proud of the high quality and safety of the dialysis services provided to our patients and partner hospitals.
