Christmas of last year, Michael Sloma knew he had a job to do — to help a woman who needed dialysis, reported Business Insider.
According to the National Kidney Foundation, one in 500 Americans is on dialysis. The chaos of severe weather conditions can throw patients in a mix.
Sloma was facing a rare blizzard in upstate New York, but this occasion was not new to him as he is the vice president of operations at U.S. Renal Care, which assists people in the fraught of natural disasters, including wildfires and hurricanes.
“We had a total of 23 people stuck inside various clinics — about half were patients, and half were staff,” Sloma told Insider.
“Six of us dug through the snow for three hours, creating a path that was 30 feet long by 4-to-5 feet tall to the parking lot, but that didn’t reach the road,” he added. “We were able to convince a nice gentleman who had some construction equipment to dig a path for us to get our vehicles into the parking lot to the main road.”
They were ultimately successful in the transport to the hospital, and the woman is “doing great,” according to Sloma.
Further south, Hurricane Harvey laid waste to Texas and Louisiana in 2017 as Ariel Brigham sat on the roof of her submerged home in Houston, hoping to be rescued.
She could not get her kidney dialysis for seven days.
“I gained 30 pounds of fluid, and I was extremely swollen,” Brigham said. “My face, my hands, my legs, my whole body was super swollen.”
She needed dialysis every three days, replacing the duties of normal kidneys. Every missed session increased her risk of death by 10%.
President and CEO of the American Kidney Fund, LaVarne Burton, told Insider she had known of people who had missed just one session only to pass away.
Luckily for Brigham, providers create a network of teams in prep for disasters — units comprised of meteorologists, utility companies, and patient-care staffers.
These disaster-ready teams assemble on a moment's notice to rearrange dialysis sessions and ensure patients’ needed care, whether it be through sailing through a flood or driving a snowplow through a storm.
The Red Cross and the National Guard are deployed, government offices are alerted, and health commissioners and fire departments are on standby.
Phil Sarnowski, the senior vice president and business-transformation partner at U.S. Renal Care, told Insider water and electricity generators would be up and running within 24 hours' notice.
Most patients in the U.S. under renal care have their dialysis done at home. Hemodialysis uses a standard machine, while peritoneal dialysis uses a tube to the abdomen.
“For peritoneal-dialysis patients, which is the majority of our home patients, we train them to do manual exchanges, meaning they can continue their treatments, even in the absence of electricity,” said Mary Dittrich, the executive vice president and chief medical officer of U.S. Renal Care.
Many patients live within a low-income bracket. With end-stage kidney failure, they can no longer work.
Burton said the financial toll could weigh in at about $10,000 a year in out-of-pocket treatment. Her organization offers a disaster-relief program, where patients receive $250 in weather emergencies. She said it could assist in replacing medications, replenishing food, pay the cost of travel and housing.
Dittrich and Sarnowski shared confidence in the care offered, as patients are ensured to see 12 hours minimum a week with care staff who “become like family” with “extraordinary levels of commitment.”
“Medical companies work together. We take other providers’ patients, we take hospital patients, they take ours, we share supplies, we share generators, we share water,” Dittrich told Insider.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.