Thread: Deal Reached on Dialysis for Immigrants

Deal Reached on Dialysis for Immigrants

By KEVIN SACK


ATLANTA — Twenty-one illegal immigrants will continue to receive regular dialysis at no cost for three years under an agreement disclosed Friday by Atlanta’s public hospital, Grady Memorial, and the world’s largest dialysis provider, Fresenius Medical Care.

The deal solves an impasse created when a previous one-year contract between Grady and Fresenius expired on Aug. 31 and the dialysis provider refused to serve patients who showed up for their regular thrice-a-week treatments.

The patients spent the past week seeking care in Atlanta-area emergency rooms, including Grady’s, which are required by federal law to screen and treat those at risk of impairment or death.

In some instances, ailing patients were turned away by emergency room doctors who determined that their elevated potassium levels and fluid retention were not yet severe enough to justify emergency treatment. Each renal patient’s need for dialysis is different, but those unable to artificially clean the toxic substances from their blood can die in as little as two weeks.

One of the patients, an illegal immigrant named Reina Andrade, chose to fly home to Honduras on Wednesday morning after being denied treatment by Grady’s emergency room on Saturday, becoming seriously ill on Sunday and receiving dialysis through another hospital’s emergency room that night, according to her sister, Marlen Andrade.

Hours after Reina Andrade and her 9-year-old son boarded a flight for Tegucigalpa, Grady and Fresenius announced that they had an agreement in principle to restore the treatments.

“That was too late for her,â€

sounds like another gift, doesn't sound like a deal to me.

the only fair deal for an illegal is deportation.

it would be better for taxpayers to just deport the freeloaders. If they know who is here illegally and they help them they should be charged with encouraging then to stay here.