CA BIG BEND MEDICAL CENTER COST ALLOCATION CONCEPTS BG BEND MEDICAL CENTER is a full-service, not-for-profit, acute care hospital with 325 beds located in Big Bend, Texas. The bulk of Big Bend's facilities are devoted to inpatient care and emergency services. However, a 100,000-square-foot section of the Big Bend complex is devoted to outpatient services. Currently, this space has two primary uses: (1) about 80 percent is used by the Outpatient Clinic, which handles all routine outpatient services offered by the hospital, and (2) 20 percent is used by the Dialysis Center The Dialysis Center performs hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis, which are alternative processes that remove wastes and excess water from the blood for patients with end-stage renal (kidney) disease. In hemodialysis, blood is pumped from the patient's arm through a shunt into a dialysis machin which uses a cleansing solution and an artificial membrane to perform the functions of a healthy kidney. Then, the cleansed blood is pumped back into the patient through a second shunt. In peritoneal dialysis, the cleansing solution is inserted directly into the abdominal cavity through a catheter. The body naturally cleanses the blood through the peritoneum-a thin membrane that lines the abdominal cavity Typically, hemodialysis patients require three dialyses per week, with each treatment lasting about four hours. Patients who use peritoneal dialy sis change their own cleansing solutions at home, usually about six times per day. This procedure can be done manually when the patient is active or automatically by machine when the patient is sleeping. However, the patient's overall condition, as well as the positioning of the catheter, must monitored regularly by nurses and technicians at the Dialysis Center. o Foundation of ACHE. 2018. Reproduction without permission is prohibited