Hopkins gains partner for dialysis services

Johns Hopkins Medicine yesterday announced a "strategic affiliation" with GAMBRO Healthcare to provide outpatient kidney dialysis services.

GAMBRO has purchased the dialysis clinic at the Hopkins Hospital campus for an undisclosed sum, said Dr. Paul Scheel Jr., director of nephrology at Hopkins. The clinic will be staffed by Hopkins faculty physicians, but 27 other employees -- nurses, technicians and clerical staff -- have become GAMBRO employees.

Scheel said Hopkins sought a partner in dialysis because of the large amount of capital required to start or expand dialysis service. The Hopkins clinic is full, and the Hopkins-GAMBRO partnership hopes to open four new clinics over the next two years, he said. Those clinics, too, will be staffed by Hopkins doctors.

The number of patients needing dialysis in inner-city Baltimore is growing at 18 percent a year, he said -- double the national rate.

GAMBRO, a Nashville-based subsidiary of a Swedish company, owns, operates, manages or consults at dialysis clinics at a number of other academic medical centers, including Harvard, Yale, Emory and Duke.

Pub Date: 4/08/97