RIO GRANDE MEDICAL CENTER is a full-service not-for-profit acute care hospital with 325 beds located in Rio Grande, Texas. The bulk of the hospital's facilities are devoted to inpatient care and emer- gency services. However, a 100,000-square-foot section of the hospital complex is devoted to outpatient services. Currently, this space has two primary uses. About 8o percent of the space is used by the Outpatient Clinic, which handles all routine outpatient services offered by the hospital. The remaining 20 percent is used by the Dialysis Center. he 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 machine, which uses a cleansing solution and an arti ficial 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 the blod through the peritoneum-a thin membrane that lines the abdominal cavity. TEypicell, emodialysis patients require thre dialses a week, with each treatment lasting about four hours. Patients who use peritoneal dialysis change their own cleansing solutions at home, usually about six times per day. This procedure can be done manually when active 27