to be clear-- every other day means MWF+SUN, then TT-SAt. everyone on this program willl be on the same schedule-- meaning the monitoring staff work on SAT ONE WEEKEND and then SUNDAY the next. forgive allmy typos-- have a broken wrist and this is tedious. dont know yet how many hours we will be on for nocturnal… we have been training for traditional home hemo on a 3 day week schedule but slacked off the idea in favor of nxstage.(he runs 3.5 hrs now at about 350 bfr) the center is convincing us to give the nocturnal a try.
however, any help from anyone out there regarding nxstage would be appreciated. we want to travel
Hi Joanne,
Welcome to Home Dialysis Central! We’re very happy to have you–and please tell other folks you know who might benefit from the info here.
If your Shreveport nocturnal program isn’t listed in our database (if it’s home and not just in-center), please encourage them to let us know so we can add them to it. That goes for any other NEW home dialysis programs any of you hear about. 
Beth, Based on our experience here are some answers to your questions.
The nocturnal program we are in uses Fresenius Machine. Machine maintenance wasn’t a problem because they had a contract with Fresenius to maintain the machines. Fresenius has Service Reps all over the U.S. so when our machine needed repair they sent their rep in OUR Area. However later into the program they changed and hired a private company to do our machine maintenance and repair.
The nocturnal program personnel came out the 1st time and set up our Water
System RO. We had all the plumbing in place they just needed to connect the RO. To maintain the RO if ours goes down, I either drive to the center and get a new one, or they ship me one next day air and I return the one I have the next clinic visit. It’s not hard at all to disconnect the machine and hook up a new one takes maybe 10 minutes.
In regards to hospital follow ups. The nephrologist at the nocturnal or training center doesn’t charge to see us. We have a local nephrologist who bills medicare for seeing us. Should dad get sick we go to our local nephrologist and if a hospitization is required dad will be admitted to the hospital he is associated with.
The training center gets paid for the dialysis treatments. If we need a local treatment our home nephrologist makes arrangements for dad to dialyze at the center he is affiliated with and his center bills for that dialysis treatment.
In regards to labs. Our clinic has an arrangement with Spectra in California. Spectra sends us mailing containers for labs. We draw the labs package them in the mailing containers and send them to the lab next day air. The shipment is prepaid by Spectra so their is no cost to the patient.
Spectra then sends the results to the training center actually they are somehow connected via computer so the lab results are fed to the training center via computer. Spectra then bills medicare for doing our labs. If something in the labs is dangerously high or low Spectra calls the training nurse and advises her right away. She in turn calls us and tells us what she wants us to do. We usually have to do another lab specime to make sure there wasn’t a false reading.
All it really takes to make this work is willing nephrologist. The training nephrologist has to be willing to let another nephrologist take on a patient if they live to far from the center. The home nephrologist has to be willing to keep a patient that is in a home program and not going to the center he is affiliated with.
I have to admit our service and care is excellent from both the home program and our home nephrologist.