Dr. Nathan Chamberlain

To serve a growing number of people with end-stage kidney failure, a physician-owned dialysis company will open its first clinic in Cleveland this weekend.

Chattanooga Kidney Centers, the dialysis arm of physician-owned-and-operated Nephrology Associates of Chattanooga, is opening its third area dialysis clinic in the Bradley Professional Building.

"A lot of dialysis across the country is done by the big companies," said Dr. Nathan Chamberlain, a nephrologist with Nephrology Associates. "It's a little different that we (nephrologists) own and operate it. ... We just think we're going to be able to do a better job because the physicians are driving the process."

Three years ago, the Chattanooga-based nephrology group opened a satellite office in Cleveland, but its dialysis patients still had to travel to Chattanooga three times a week for treatments. Now those patients can get their treatments in town, Dr. Chamberlain said.

The comfort of patients during time-intensive dialysis treatments is a priority for the managers of the new clinic, called the Kidney Center of Cleveland, said Lloyd Smith, nurse manager of the clinic.

The center, which will hold an open house for patients and doctors on Sunday, has 29 dialysis stations, all of which have heated seats to ward off the cold as patients' blood is circulated through the filtering equipment, he said.

"We really wanted to step up a notch and be a clinic that these people want to go to," Mr. Smith said.

Pressing need

There is a pressing need for facilities to care for the 1,000 dialysis patients living in the greater Chattanooga area, said Jennifer McGlohon, executive director of the Kidney Foundation of Greater Chattanooga.

"The need is quite severe for clinics and facilities to treat the patient because we have so many in our area," she said. "Unfortunately, the rate of patients being diagnosed with kidney disease is just rapidly on the rise. ... They can't build clinics fast enough to help the patients."

There is one other dialysis clinic in Cleveland, run by Fresenius Medical Care, a Massachusetts-based dialysis company with 1,700 dialysis locations nationwide. Otherwise, the nearest clinics are in Knoxville, Athens, Tenn., and Chattanooga, Ms. McGlohon said.

Rising obesity rates are contributing to a growing incidence in diabetes and hypertension, which can cause chronic kidney disease. In addition, a general aging of the population is boosting the number of people whose kidney deterioration progresses to the point of requiring dialysis, Dr. Chamberlain said.

"As those people live longer, you see more complications of those disease processes," he said.

The number of people with end-stage renal failure grew from 209,000 in 1991 to 472,000 in 2004, according to a November 2007 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The incidence of chronic kidney disease grew to 13 percent of the adult U.S. population in 2004, up from 10 percent 10 years earlier, the study said.

"We expect that the dialysis population in Cleveland will grow, just as it is nationwide. We're trying to meet that need as it happens," Dr. Chamberlain said.