Dialysis center debate a tussle between 2 towns

LEWISTON – Dialysis patients living near Wilton and Rumford soon may be able to receive care closer to home – just as soon as officials settle the debate about which town should open a dialysis center.

A team of health care providers has been trying to open a dialysis center in Wilton for more than a year. Now there’s another medical group looking to do the same thing in Rumford. Both sides say their area is a better location for a center.

State officials may decide to approve either center, or both. That means the proposals, at least for now, are competing for state approval, something that is causing friction between the two groups behind them.

“We just need one [a dialysis unit] of our own,” said Dick Lovejoy at a meeting of the Greater Rumford Area Dialysis Alliance meeting Monday.

Two cooperating groups, Androscoggin Clinical Associates’ Lewiston-Auburn kidney centers and Fresenius Medical Care of Massachusetts, filed an application with the state in January 2000 to open a 12-unit center in Wilton.

Dixfield Rep. Bruce Bryant and the Rumford alliance, along with American Renal Associates Inc., want to bring a 10-unit dialysis center in the Rumford-Dixfield area.

Candace Walworth, medical director of the Androscoggin Clinical Associates Lewiston-Auburn kidney centers, said the Wilton group wants to provide dialysis services closer to home for patients in the western mountain area who in some cases travel more than two hours, three times a week for treatment.