New heart and kidney treatment center opens in Blackfoot

A first-of-its-kind treatment center opened its doors in Blackfoot Thursday night. The new facility is a dialysis and cardio renal center that offers coordinated treatment of heart and kidney disease.

Doctor Fahim Rahim, a nephrologist and one of the co-founders of Cardio Renal Centers of America, said it’s the first facility to do that in the nation.

The center is part of Bingham Memorial Hospital, in partnership with the Cardio Renal Centers of America and Fresenius Kidney Care.

“The concept is a novel concept,” said doctor John Lassetter, a cardiologist and co-founder of CRCA. “It’s been discussed a lot but nobody’s brought it to fruition. So I’m proud to be a co-founder of Cardio Renal Centers of America.”

The new center offers both on-site dialysis treatment as well as training and preparation for at-home dialysis care.

The state-of-the-art facility includes features like a water treatment center, five consultation rooms, one procedure room and plenty of space for dialysis patients to get treatment.

Rahim said the center is a project they’ve been working heavily toward completing for at least two years. Construction on the center took a little more than one year to complete. Doctors who are a part of the center said having a center like that locally that offers both treatments – and prevention – is invaluable.

Lassetter said often time, heart and kidney disease can go hand-in-hand. They have similar health risks and causes and often, those with chronic kidney problems lead to vascular disease. Lassetter added that vascular disease is the highest cause of mortality among those who suffer from chronic kidney problems.

Lassetter said that’s another key thing about the center. It’s not just for treatment, it plays a large part in prevention. By catching either heart or kidney disease early, it could help prevent the other and lower a patient’s risk for worsening health. Doctors agree that’s just one of several benefits.

“The patients don’t have to run all over town, trying to get services from one stop here and one stop there and all over the place so it really changing the face of how healthcare is going to be defined in the future,” Rahim said.

“It’s a much more timely visit so by being able to see a cardiologist and a nephrologist at the same time, number one is you know the care is coordinated,” Lassetter said. “We can discuss the options right in front of the patient and explain it from both sides so that they better understand that. In addition, its difficult to get into specialists and so by combining specialists into one clinic setting, we can eliminate those time gaps.”

Rahim said it also helps reduce medical costs for patients.

“As you know the healthcare costs are skyrocketing and most of that is because there’s repetition of costs attached to doing more testing, not knowing all the information when the patient shows up,” Rahim added. “When you have everything available to you and the physicians working together, the costs go down.”

The center is dubbed Rahim Pavilion, dedicated and in honor of Drs Naeem and Fahim Rahim’s late father, who passed away in 2014.

Fahim Rahim said that makes this center even more personal to him. To see the center in his father’s name help patients for decades to come, is exciting and means the world to him.

Rahim added they hope to build similar facilities in Idaho Falls and Pocatello in the future.