Question of the Day - 10 January 2020

Fresenius Kidney Care, on E Sahara and Bruce (between Maryland and Eastern), across from the Honda dealer, might be pretty convenient for someone on the Strip.

Your nephew should call those clinics himself and make inquiries. Clinics vary throughout the USA as to how to get to and from the clinic, insurances they accept/reject, and if they have so many clients they can not accommodate him and not solely based upon how close a dialysis clinic happens to be.

In addition to checking whether a certain clinic accepts a certain insurance, you should check what the copay would be. Many times that someone in an insurance company says "It's covered" or "It's in our network", they fail to mention that you still might have a copay of 20% or even more. You should begin your research with your insurance company & have them tell or send you a list of approved clinics, & then for the ones you select as best, call them to find out whether anything has changed, such as they're going out of business, they no longer have a contract or arrangement with the insurance company, or in the case of having both primary & secondary insurance (such as Medicare & Medicaid), whether they accept the secondary insurance. Among your best choices, check online for customer ratings of them; one might get noticeably better ratings than another. Finally, you might want to find out how long they've been in business at their current location; the longer the better.

I think it is great you are all going to Vegas. If I might it always worth reminding people that being an Organ donor matters. Not just to people with Kidney issues but so many other health issues. A few years ago, the team I coach started doing some awareness work on organ donation. We got to go up and see firsthand what a difference it makes. It is not enough to put it on your driver’s license tell everyone you know that this is your final wish. 

Unless travel is absolutely necessary. When someone has a life-threatening condition which requires something like dialysis it's simply reckless to travel knowing this. There could also be insurance (denial) implications and other exceptions to your medical coverage. Not to mention the implications for others around you too.  

Most of the time, people have to set appointments long in advance for dialysis as it's just not a one-off where you can drop-in like it's a buffet. 

While others will disagree, you have to adjust your lifestyle, needs, and expectations as a result of your health condition and limitations. But, social media influencers and more are encouraging everyone to be selfish with high demands or expectations. Many are very self-entitled in North America.

Sorry I've been away, so this will probably be missed.  The poster's nephew should notify his dialysis personnel ASAP that he needs "transient dialysis" in the area including his desired dates of visitation.  It is a function of the dialysis center's SOCIAL WORKER (or some companies have a specific person) to coordinate this for him: locate centers within the area, make the calls, gather and transmit all the medical and insurance information for the receiving center to approve him;  inform him of the options (locations, shifts available, etc).  Hopefully since Vegas is a vacation mecca it won't be hard to find him a spot, but some places do not take transients, e.g. visiting patients and/or have limits of number of patients they can take at any given time.  But he shouldn't have to do all that himself.