A dialysis unit boom has made it easier for patients to get care closer to home at more convenient times.

In the past year, Faxton St. Luke's Healthcare has opened a dialysis unit in Hamilton and expanded its facilities in Rome and at the Masonic Care Community, increasing the total number of stations available from 68 to 96 at its seven locations.

Another eight-station unit will open at St. Luke's Home early next year.

And Bassett Healthcare, which already offered dialysis in Cooperstown and Oneonta, opened a 12-station unit at Little Falls Hospital at the end of 2010.

In Oneida County, 299 patients receive dialysis, and 69 patients receive the treatment in Herkimer County, according to the National Kidney Foundation of Central New York.

Rosa Femia Kahl has benefited from the addition of more units.

Kahl, an Oriskany resident, used to get dialysis three days a week in Oneida, but she switched to Rome in July after that unit expanded. That cut her 1½-hour roundtrip commute to 30 minutes.

“It saves on gas, and I get home earlier,” she said.

The expanded unit also let her change her schedule, so she now gets dialysis first thing in the morning instead of at 11 a.m.

“If I have to go somewhere or make my doctor's appointments, it's a lot easier,” Kahl said.

Diabetes and high blood pressure are the most common causes of chronic kidney disease. When it leads to kidney failure, patients go on dialysis, often for years, while waiting for a transplant.

Patients require dialysis three days a week for about four hours each day. They must follow strict diets that limit fluids, salt, potassium and phosphorous.

Many cope with other serious health problems and numerous medical appointments that must be scheduled around dialysis. Some patients work, but many cannot, while others need someone to drive them to dialysis.

Bassett decided to open the unit after receiving “many, many phone calls of desperate people from the Mohawk Valley, anywhere between Amsterdam and Oneida, lacking chairs,” said Dr. Ann Eldred, senior attending physician of nephrology at Bassett.

People from Herkimer County were driving to Utica, Cooperstown and Syracuse to get treatment, she said.

Some dialysis patients faced even bigger problems in 2008 when the number of people receiving dialysis from Faxton St. Luke's shot up 13 percent, said Kelly Scheinman, executive director of Faxton St. Luke's Regional Dialysis Center. Back then, 54 patients did not have a regular time or place for treatment, she said.

They were fit in at different units at different times whenever an opening popped up, she said. That's when hospital officials began planning the recent expansion, she said.

“We've had a tremendous amount of physical growth in accommodating this increase in numbers that we've seen, basically, since 2008,” Scheinman said.

Although Faxton St. Luke's added a third shift to some dialysis units in 2009 to make sure all patients had consistent appointments, neither the times nor locations were necessarily the most convenient, she said.

But with the recent openings and expansions, patients are able to use the unit closest to their own homes at times that work with their schedules, she said.

And that makes it easier for patients to do what doctors want them to - live lives as similar as possible to their lives before dialysis, Scheinman said.

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