Dialysis Care During a Wildfire

There are many things that need to happen when natural disasters hit, from evacuation to emergency responses, to relief efforts. Dialysis patients need thrice weekly treatment, come rain, snow, or massive wildfires, so where can they go? Wendy Schrag, Vice President State Government Affairs at Fresenius Medical Care spoke with me about how Fresenius Medical Care responded to the wildfires in New Mexico this summer and how NCMM’s Bill Wagner was able to connect her to local resources.

Last spring, NCMM’s Bill Wagner went to Tukwila, WA, to speak to a group of representatives from local, state, and national agencies about Emergency response and transportation coordination. Afterwards, Bill wrote about the experience, saying:

“‘Prepare for the worst, hope for the best’ is a useful motto for the average person, but if you’re a community emergency management professional then preparing for the worst is a necessity.”

Transportation is always important, but during an emergency it may be the difference between accessing lifesaving treatment or not. Some of that treatment is the vitally necessary dialysis that clinics across the country provide to patients, who need to be dialyzed three times a week.

This summer New Mexico has experienced multiple wildfires that have caused cities to evacuate and normal transportation systems to be disrupted. When Wendy learned that access to the dialysis clinics that Fresenius Medical Care runs in Alamogordo and Roswell might be disrupted, she began reaching out to her contacts in search of a solution.

Wendy told me that “in disaster situations, we want to avoid, if possible, patients having to go to the hospital to get their treatments.” Not only is it arduous for a patient to check into a hospital 3 times a week, hospitals and emergency rooms are often flooded during natural disasters, so if a patient can continue going to a clinic it benefits the hospitals as well.

When Wendy learned that some of the roads to the clinics in Alamagordo and Roswell were disrupted she reached out to Bill, “I reached out to Bill because I know that Bill always has local contacts where I may not. So, he started reaching out to someone he knew at the New Mexico Transit Association, and I think by the next day, she had provided him at least two local transit agencies that were willing to help.”

Luckily, another local transit agency reached out and was able to transport the displaced patients to treatment. Wendy told me that she may not have needed Bill’s contacts that time, but that “in a disaster situation, transportation is always an issue, and to have more resources than we needed was a huge blessing and very unusual.”