U.S. Renal Care Brand Guidelines: Jonesboro 2000, Plano & a Physician-Partner Model

A dialysis company built around doctors.

U.S. Renal Care began in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in 2000. A press release issued in February 2019 by the company and Bain Capital says it was founded there by Chris Brengard and an experienced team of healthcare executives, and the medical news service Healio, reporting the same month, also described Brengard as its founder. The company is now headquartered in Plano, Texas, the dateline of its press releases.

Its business is outpatient dialysis for people with kidney failure, which the company describes as end-stage renal disease. In the 2019 release it said it “partners with nephrologists and hospitals to develop, acquire, and operate outpatient treatment centers,” offering in-center and at-home haemodialysis as well as peritoneal dialysis at home. Its website today lists five treatment paths: kidney transplant, peritoneal dialysis, home haemodialysis, in-center haemodialysis and conservative care management.

The doctor partnership is the centre of the brand’s story. The company’s website says it “partners with the nation’s leading nephrologists” and runs a page for nephrologists alongside its patient pages; its releases use the short form USRC after the full name. The name itself is spelled with full stops, U.S. Renal Care, and the website footer states that the U.S. Renal Care logo is a trademark of U.S. Renal Care, Inc.

The company frames its work around a mission “to change the lives of people living with kidney disease,” a line that also heads its home-page video, “Changing the Lives of People Living with Kidney Disease.”

Mergers, investors and a buyout.

U.S. Renal Care grew by joining with other dialysis operators and by changing investors. For several years before 2019 its backers included Leonard Green & Partners, whose senior partner said in the February 2019 release that the firm had helped grow the business “over the past seven years,” alongside Frazier Healthcare Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Cressey & Company.

The largest step was a merger with DSI Renal. On 3 January 2016 U.S. Renal Care announced that it had secured regulatory approval and finalized the merger. It said that, on closing, it ran 300 outpatient clinics, 147 home dialysis programmes and 26 acute-care hospital contracts, caring for about 23,000 patients across 33 states and the Territory of Guam, and called itself the nation’s third-largest dialysis provider. The approval came with a condition: Home Dialysis Central reported in April 2016 that, according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, three DSI clinics in Laredo, Texas, had to be divested, and that Satellite Healthcare would take them over.

The next change was in ownership. On 13 February 2019 the company announced a definitive agreement to be acquired by a private investor group led by Brengard and the management team, together with Bain Capital Private Equity, Summit Partners, Revelstoke Capital Partners and Mark Caputo. Financial terms were not disclosed. Healio reported on 14 February 2019 that U.S. Renal Care was the third-largest dialysis provider in the United States, with about 25,000 patients in 335 facilities across 32 states and Guam, and described Caputo as the former chief executive of Liberty Dialysis; Hospital Management reported the agreement a day later.

Caputo moved into the top job the following year. On 5 June 2020 the company announced him as chief executive after a national search; he had been chairman of the board and had worked alongside Mary Dittrich, the chief medical officer, who had served as interim chief executive. The release said Caputo had founded Liberty Dialysis, built it from two clinics to 260, and merged it with Fresenius Medical Care in 2012.

Design and documentation.

Dialysis and kidney-care companies sell to two audiences at once. One is clinical: nephrologists, nurses, technicians and hospital buyers who choose machines, dialyzers and solutions. The other is the patient, who may spend several sessions a week in a treatment chair or carry out dialysis at home. Their imagery tends to answer both: a calm patient in a reclining chair beside a machine, a nurse in a bright, orderly clinic, and close-ups of dialyzers, tubing and the screens of haemodialysis machines.

Home treatment has added a second setting. Peritoneal dialysis and home haemodialysis bring the equipment into kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms, and the companies that make or support it often show machines beside sofas and tables rather than in clinical rooms. Symbols tend to stay simple: kidney shapes, drops, waves and circles that print clearly on a label, a machine housing or a clinic sign.

The trade meets at a few large congresses. The American Society of Nephrology’s Kidney Week, held in Denver in 2026, drew nearly 12,000 participants from close to 100 countries, the society says, and makers such as Fresenius Medical Care list it among their events. In Europe, the European Renal Association holds an annual congress, scheduled for Rotterdam in 2027 and Berlin in 2028, according to the association.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each company: who founded it, who owns it, where it works and what it makes. Where a fact rests only on a company’s own word, we say so, and the colours and typefaces shown are our own interpretation rather than any official brand standard.

Five values and a research team.

The company also took on a management role beyond its own clinics. Its website says that in 2023 U.S. Renal Care began providing administrative services to Satellite Healthcare, the dialysis provider it calls “a pioneer in the kidney industry”; its October 2026 releases name the two organisations together, including a joint DAISY Award programme that recognised 25 nurses during Nephrology Nurses Week in September 2026.

Its 2026 releases describe U.S. Renal Care as “the largest privately held and fastest-growing dialysis provider” in the United States, partnering with nephrologists to care for more than 37,000 people across 32 states; those are the company’s own descriptions. It also runs a Kidney Research team that designs and conducts clinical trials, and in October 2026 it said the team was presenting eight studies at the American Society of Nephrology’s Kidney Week 2026. In September 2026 it co-hosted the Nephrology Business Leadership Conference, a meeting on the business side of nephrology.

Its identity is stated in words as much as in pictures. The website sets out five values, each with a short tag line: Excellence (“Quality comes first”), Partnership (“Together, we succeed”), Innovation (“Purpose driven progress”), Inclusion (“Everyone belongs”) and Compassion (“We start with heart”). It speaks of people “living with kidney disease,” and its patient pages cover diet, fitness, work and emotional health alongside treatment. The company says it has been named to Newsweek’s list of America’s Greatest Workplaces for three consecutive years, most recently in June 2026.

For a design guide, U.S. Renal Care shows how a clinic network can build its brand around a partnership model and a set of plainly worded values rather than a product. Compare Satellite Healthcare, the provider it has supported with administrative services since 2023, and DaVita, another large American dialysis network. For this guide we use a harbour navy and a clear blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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