Facility Administrators at the Dialysis Center

What is a facility administrator?

The facility administrator (FA) at a dialysis center is the person who manages the entire center. The FA is responsible for all aspects of a center’s operation and is a problem solver for any issues that may arise.

Most DaVita facility administrators are dialysis nurses, although some are social workers, dietitians or have a background in business. By excelling in their jobs, and demonstrating administrative, management and leadership skills, they were promoted to FAs.

What do facility administrators do?

Ensuring the safety of patients and employees is the most important task of the FA. Being able to prioritize and multitask are qualities that make an FA successful. In addition to overseeing dialysis treatments and making sure the clinical outcomes are the best they can be for their patients, the FA will make sure their dialysis team members come to work as scheduled and that the center is in top condition. Performing these duties requires attention to many details. A facility administrator’s job can be divided into three main areas: Patient Care Manager, Employee Manager and Facility Operation Manager.

Patient care manager

Before someone becomes a DaVita patient, they may meet with an FA. The FA welcomes prospective and new patients by giving tours of the dialysis center, explaining about the process and answering initial questions.

When patients first begin dialysis, the FA will make sure they fill out all the necessary paperwork. Because success at a DaVita dialysis center is measured by how well patients respond to their dialysis treatments, the FA will monitor each patient’s clinical outcomes with the center’s nurses. In an effort to provide service excellence to all DaVita patients, a DaVita Quality Index (DQI) was established. The DQI is a score that measures how well each clinic is doing by looking at several factors regarding patient outcomes. The FA monitors the DQI score for their center.

Each month the FA will have a patient care conference with the center’s nephrologists (kidney doctors) and other members of the health care team to discuss how each patient is doing. The FA will coordinate with doctors and nurses to make sure each patient is receiving the best care and education so they can get the most out of dialysis.

Employee manager

In order to give patients the best care, the FA will put together the best team of nurses, dietitians, social workers, patient care technicians, reuse technicians, biomedical technicians and all the others that keep the center running smoothly.

Some of the responsibilities the FA must focus on in regard to employees include:

• Notifying recruiters to send qualified candidates when needing to hire staff
• Interviewing and hiring staff
• Making sure teammates complete all training and pass competency exams
• Performing teammate job evaluations
• Determining teammate work schedules
• Delegating duties to the right person to complete a job
• Assisting members of the team, such as social workers with finding patient transportation or nurses with determining patient scheduling

Facility operation manager

In addition to overseeing patient care and managing a team of employees, the FA is responsible for the complete operation of the center. Everything from ordering supplies and making sure the center is clean to completing paperwork and attending meetings.

Each center must adhere to public health and safety regulations. This will include meeting with state surveyors from the Department of Health. The FA will make sure their center is clean, the water supply is up to dialysis standards and the building is safe and adheres to all necessary codes.

Some administrative functions include:

• Creating and following a budget
• Ordering center supplies and patient medications
• Receiving and inventorying supplies
• Communicating with vendors
• Completing administrative paperwork
• Meeting monthly with the regional director
• Attending quarterly meetings to discuss: patient outcomes, facility ranking, possible center issues, patient infection rate, physical inspection of the building, training and education for teammates, water quality, reuse averages, biomedical reports, safety programs, incident reports, audits and surveys

Summary

Each day brings many challenges for a facility administrator. In addition to their planned duties, FAs may be called on to handle any emergency that arises. Relentless follow up is needed to make sure all jobs are completed on time and correctly. An FA will also spend time working with new nephrologists (kidney doctors) and building relationships with medical directors and other doctors. For FAs that are registered nurses, many times they will work directly with patients.

It takes a multi-skilled person who is comfortable running the entire show to be a facility administrator. One that can accept many responsibilities, make quick decisions and be able to relate well with people.