Tennessee dialysis clinic closed over infection control lapses

Tennessee regulators have shut down a dialysis center for putting patients at risk for bloodstream infections.

The Tennessee Department of Health this month reported that the license for Advanced Dialysis Clinic LLC in Medina was revoked. The board that oversees health care facilities issued the revocation order, which stated the clinic had failed to follow though on a plan of correction after state officials observed several infection control violations during a January inspection.

During that visit, inspectors noticed debris on the treatment floor while patients were receiving treatments, found that the center was not using proper techniques to prevent potential bacterial exposure at a catheter site, determined that it failed to ensure supplies weren’t contaminated and noted that it did not maintain aseptic techniques when preparing intravenous medications.

Nurses also lacked the proper training and skills to serve the complex needs of dialysis patients, according to the order issued by the Tennessee Board of Licensing Health Care Facilities.

The state in 2012 began requiring dialysis centers to report bloodstream infections, but Tennessee is not yet releasing infection rates for individual dialysis centers as it does for hospitals. Clusters of bloodstream infections occurred at two dialysis centers in the state last year. One dialysis center reported 12 patients who had to receive dialysis using a central line to major veins were sickened with bloodstream infections in May and June of 2013. The other reported 16 of these infections between March and July of 2013.

Tennessee officials disclosed that information this summer during the annual conference of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists. They reported that infection rates at the two centers decreased after Health Department experts consulted with administrators of those clinics on ways to identify and correct lapses that put patients at risk.

Nationwide, hospitalization rates among dialysis patients have increased 47 percent since 1993, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Infections at the vascular access site increased 87 percent.

Contact Tom Wilemon at 615-726-5961 and on Twitter @TomWilemon.