Mercer partners with Piedmont to open organ transplant center

April 17 will mark the opening of Mercer Medicine’s and Piedmont Healthcare’s collaborative organ transplant satellite clinic.
The clinic will provide crucial preoperative and post-operative transplant services to those in Central Georgia needing kidney transplants.
Of the 3,200 Georgia patients waiting for kidney transplant, close to 200 die each year. Though the satellite clinic will not perform transplants of any kind, Central Georgia kidney patients will have the ability to have transplant evaluations done locally through the new clinic.
The clinic will be located at 707 Pine St. in the building of the Mercer Medicine Internal Medicine Clinic. It will be open quarterly with the possibility of increasing hours if demand requires it.
The clinic will provide evaluations for pre-dialysis and dialysis patients. Trips to Atlanta for these evaluations and treatment can be expensive and time-consuming.
Many of these patients do not have the money or time to afford making the trip to Atlanta for these important appointments and having a clinic in Macon will afford them the opportunity to seek preoperative evaluation and post-operative care locally.
Piedmont Healthcare has a strong record when it comes to transplant success. They have the best transplant survival rate in Georgia and one of the highest transplant survival rates in the country. The transplant clinic will be staffed by employees of Piedmont but Mercer Medicine will be responsible for oversight.
Piedmont Healthcare is a not-for-profit company responsible for many hospitals around Georgia, including the 529 acute tertiary care facility in Buckhead and the 215-bed acute care facility of Piedmont Henry Hospital in Stockbridge, Georgia.
The Buckhead Piedmont Hospital has been ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the best acute-care, non-academic hospital in metro Atlanta. Piedmont Healthcare also formed the Piedmont Heart Institute, the Piedmont Physicians Group, the Piedmont Clinic and the Piedmont Healthcare Foundation.
Bringing this expertise to Macon will be a great advantage for those who need treatment for kidney transplant as well as for the medical community.
“Transplants are a wave of the future. We are bringing state-of-the-art medicine to Macon,” Mercer Medicine chief of nephrology Ajay Srivastava stated.
In addition to being crucial for kidney patients in Central Georgia, the satellite clinic will be beneficial to the medical community of Macon and Mercer. There will be an increase in fellowships stemming from the new clinic.
Fellowships, the process of the medical training coming after residency, are for doctors who are specializing in specific fields. The new clinic will offer fellowships in specializations such as nephrology and infectious diseases.
“Mercer will be able to create training fellowships so that doctors can be specialized,” Srivastava said.
The clinic is set to open on April 17 and will have a ribbon cutting and reception on April 16.
Mercer Medicine is responsible for providing the space and oversight to the Piedmont Healthcare team.
Multiple-specialty physicians compose this physician practice and clinical component of Mercer University School of Medicine. Mercer Medicine employs over 80 staff including doctors, nurse clinicians and more.
The new transplant clinic will bring a great amount of medical knowledge and expertise to Macon and will be very beneficial for kidney transplant patients.