(file photo)

A national health provider is expanding in Western New York again with a new renal dialysis clinic.

Bronx Dialysis Center filed plans with the state Department of Health to open a 13-station clinic to provide chronic renal dialysis from a leased space at 520 Ellicott Street near Tupper, just blocks from the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

Plans call for spending $1.9 million to build and certify the clinic, to be known as Buffalo Dialysis.

Bronx Dialysis is operated by Knickerbocker Dialysis Inc., which is licensed to operate 27 dialysis facilities across New York, including seven in the Western New York region. Several of those sites are undergoing improvements and expansions.

The company has been expanding its holdings in the region through acquisition and management contracts over the past few years.

Knickerbocker is owned by DaVita HealthCare Partners Inc., one of the nation’s largest dialysis providers.

According to plans filed with the state, the clinic on Ellicott will also include a two-room home training suite. The facility will be handicap accessible and will include on-site parking for patients and employees. Dr. Luis Bent-Shaw has been named medical director for the proposed clinic.

Bent-Shaw is director of the hemodialysis unit at Buffalo General Medical Center and directs inpatient nephrology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. He also sees patients at the Regional Center of Excellence for Transplantation and Kidney Care at Erie County Medical Center and the UBMD Medicine/Pediatric clinic on Linwood Avenue in Buffalo.

Tracey Drury covers health/medical, nonprofits and insurance

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