Mountain View and San Jose, CA - October 13, 2011 - El Camino Hospital, an acute-care, 542-bed, nonprofit and locally governed corporation with campuses in Mountain View and Los Gatos, Calif., and Satellite Healthcare, a nonprofit dialysis-services provider headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with more than 20 dialysis centers in the Bay Area and nearly 50 nationwide, today announced that they will enter into a collaboration concerning dialysis services. This long-term collaboration will provide dialysis patients in the El Camino Hospital service area with the high-quality care and services that are hallmarks of both El Camino Hospital and Satellite Healthcare.
"El Camino Hospital is taking important steps to secure continued access to vital dialysis services for the community in the near term and to meet expected demand in the future," said George Ting, MD, medical director, El Camino Dialysis Services. "We believe we need to change our business structure and increase operational efficiencies and think we can best do this by enlisting Satellite Healthcare, which has focus and expertise in this area, to provide specialized administrative support services to El Camino Hospital's dialysis centers. This collaboration will allow us to continue to serve patients in our community, and will benefit payors as well as patients as we apply best practices from both organizations."
"Satellite Healthcare was founded by a Stanford University physician nearly 40 years ago, and our commitment to making life better for people living with kidney disease hasn't wavered since," said Mark Burke, President and CEO of Satellite Healthcare. "We are excited by the opportunity to support El Camino Hospital, which shares our commitment to innovation and to providing excellent, affordable patient care for the local community, in operating its dialysis program. We're also pleased to bring our nationally recognized Satellite WellBound home therapy services to El Camino Hospital's patients and, together with El Camino Hospital, to expand our in-center dialysis presence to the Los Gatos community."
Under the terms of the agreement between El Camino Hospital and Satellite Healthcare:
- Satellite Healthcare will provide El Camino Hospital's dialysis centers with its advanced, paperless clinical information system and with certain "back-office" administrative services. Satellite Healthcare's clinical information system will relieve El Camino Hospital's dialysis staff from the administrative burden of manual data entry and support El Camino Hospital in achieving new operating economies at its dialysis centers.
- Home dialysis services for El Camino Hospital patients and for local Satellite home dialysis patients will be provided through a new venture managed and majority owned by Satellite WellBound, the first healthcare services provider focused on personalized self-care training for home dialysis patients and on expert pre-dialysis patient wellness education.
- El Camino Hospital will participate in a new venture managed and majority owned by Satellite Healthcare to open a new dialysis center in Los Gatos, an area where neither organization currently provides outpatient dialysis services.
- El Camino Hospital continues to own and operate its existing outpatient dialysis facilities and all staff at its dialysis centers continue to be employed by El Camino Hospital.
