The nation’s largest not-for-profit dialysis group has reached a deal to buy the Rubin Dialysis Centers, a local nonprofit that serves patients with kidney disease across the Capital Region.
Officially the Hortense and Louis Rubin Dialysis Center Inc., the nonprofit opened its first center in Troy in 1986 and went on to open additional locations in Saratoga Springs in 1995 and Clifton Park in 2003. CEO Wayne Evancoe says the center’s 122 employees will keep their jobs and current salaries under the new ownership.
“Over the last couple years, our board of directors has been looking into the future at how we are going to survive as an independent not-for-profit,” he said. “The competition from for-profit chains has really increased. Meanwhile, our reimbursements from the state have decreased. So we began entertaining the idea of selling to another, larger not-for-profit that could guarantee our survival in the future.”
The board ultimately decided to sell the centers to the Dialysis Clinic Inc., a not-for-profit company headquartered in Nashville with more than 200 clinics across the country. Founded in 1971, DCI serves more than 13,000 patients in 27 states and is the only major dialysis provider to remain under its own control. Much of this has to do with the increased competition nonprofits face from for-profit care providers as the cost of care continues to rise and Medicare payouts remain the same.
The Rubin Dialysis Center provided notice of the impending sale, which should be official this summer, to the state Department of Labor on Tuesday.
Evancoe said the board has been considering a sale for at least five years.
A few years ago, DCI opened its first Capital Region center on Washington Avenue Extension in Albany. Its operations aren’t that different from the Rubin centers, Evancoe said. They both provide in-home dialysis treatments, and DCI was impressed by the remote Internet monitoring technology Rubin uses for these treatments, he said.
“DCI is the best possible partner that we could find and hopefully we will grow and benefit under them,” he said.
