Just after Baxter bid $4 billion to purchase Gambro, a maker of dialysis-related products, in the hope of being a dominant force in the dialysis marketplace, there is another news item out of Gambro’s Brentwood, Tennessee home base. Ambulatory Services of America (ASA), of Brentwood, has bought a majority interest in six dialysis centers and an acute dialysis program in the Los Angeles area.
The terms of the purchase were not disclosed, but the facilities were purchased from Kidney Centers Inc. (KCI), and the six dialysis centers currently serve 700 patients. The acute dialysis program serves eight hospitals.
“Given the strong presence of Innovative Dialysis in the Los Angeles area, we had long known of KCI, and we appreciated its physician joint venture model, which is much like ours,” said Timothy Martin, the chief executive officer of ASA and its subsidiary, Innovative Dialysis. “At Innovative Dialysis, we prefer to operate in joint ventures with physicians where our nephrologist-partners can take the lead in providing high-quality care to patients with ESRD, and we can support them by taking care of the business aspects of running dialysis facilities. We look forward to working with the staff at these facilities as well as their physician partners.”
Through this acquisition, ASA now provides care to 7000 patients through 85 dialysis programs, ASA announced in December 2012.
The ASA vision is to become the first national clinical enterprise to consolidate ambulatory services from multiple medical specialties. The company plans to do this through deals with differing specialties that provide high-quality, evidence-based services that help demonstrate improved clinical outcomes. The initial focus is on both radiation oncology and renal dialysis.
