DaVita Brand Guidelines: Total Renal Care, “To Give Life” & a Village in Denver

A hospital group’s unit, a buyout and a vote.

DaVita, the kidney-care company headquartered in Denver, Colorado, began as part of a hospital group. English Wikipedia says it was founded in 1979 as Medical Ambulatory Care, a subsidiary of National Medical Enterprises, the company now called Tenet Healthcare; the same article’s summary box gives 1992, so both dates appear. In August 1994, the article says, DLJ Merchant Banking Partners bought 70 per cent of the business in a leveraged buyout, and it was renamed Total Renal Care. In February 1998 it acquired Renal Treatment Centers.

The company’s own history says that in the late 1990s Total Renal Care was close to bankruptcy when Kent Thiry became chairman and chief executive; English Wikipedia dates his appointment to October 1999. In May 2000, the company says, more than 600 of its leaders gathered to vote on a new name, DaVita, which it explains as an Italian phrase meaning “to give life,” and on a set of core values. English Wikipedia dates the formal change of name to DaVita Inc. to October 2000 and says the company sold its operations outside the United States that year.

The move to Colorado came a decade later. The Denver Business Journal reported on 15 July 2010 that DaVita had announced in May 2009 that it would move its executive staff to the Denver area from El Segundo, California, and had leased temporary headquarters space in the city in January 2010. The same day, DaVita announced a permanent headquarters beside the Millennium Bridge at the west end of the 16th Street Mall, to be occupied in the second half of 2012 and to host training under the name DaVita University.

A Village of teammates.

DaVita’s identity rests heavily on words. The company says it is “affectionately referred to as the Village,” a name taken up alongside the new company name in 2000 to create a sense of community, and it calls its employees “teammates.” In November 2001, it says, it introduced “The DaVita Way” at its first national meeting, where hundreds of teammates crossed real bridges to show their commitment, an image taken from a “Bridge” idea Thiry had put to his leaders. Its stated mission is “To be the Provider, Partner, and Employer of Choice,” and in 2018, the company says, teammates chose six WE CARE service standards: welcome, empathise, connect, actively listen, respect and encourage.

The business grew largely through acquisitions. English Wikipedia dates the purchase of Gambro Healthcare to October 2005; DaVita says that deal doubled its number of dialysis centres. In 2012 it bought HealthCare Partners, a California physician group that became DaVita Medical Group, and in June 2019 it completed the sale of that business to Optum, part of UnitedHealth Group, as both the company and English Wikipedia record. The company says its international expansion began in 2011 and that it was present in 14 countries outside the United States as of 2025; in March 2024, German Wikipedia says, it bought 154 clinics in Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Ecuador from Fresenius Medical Care.

English Wikipedia, citing DaVita’s annual report for 2025, gives 2,657 outpatient centres in the United States serving 200,500 patients, and 585 centres serving 94,500 patients in other countries. DaVita is also one of the backers of Mozarc Medical, which describes itself as an independent kidney-technology company supported by an investment from Medtronic and DaVita. In 2019, the company says, Thiry handed the chief executive role to Javier Rodriguez and stayed on as executive chairman.

Clinics, machines and congresses.

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.

Berkshire Hathaway and the courts.

DaVita’s shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange, its 2010 headquarters announcement shows, and Berkshire Hathaway holds a large stake. Reuters reported on 13 February 2025 that Berkshire had sold 203,091 shares two days earlier under a share-repurchase agreement in which DaVita buys back enough stock each quarter to keep Berkshire’s holding at about 45 per cent; after that sale Berkshire held about 35.89 million shares.

The company’s record includes several legal settlements, which English Wikipedia lists: in October 2014 DaVita agreed to settle allegations of illegal kickbacks to doctors; in June 2015 it settled allegations over billing for unnecessarily wasted drugs; and in October 2018 it settled False Claims Act allegations tied to Medicare Advantage payments. In July 2021 a federal grand jury indicted the company and its former chief executive over alleged agreements not to recruit other companies’ staff; in April 2022 a jury in Colorado acquitted both, as the law firm Cooley noted in a review of the first criminal trials of that kind. In October 2021, English Wikipedia adds, the Federal Trade Commission placed limits on future DaVita mergers in Utah.

For a design guide, DaVita shows how a coined name and an in-house vocabulary of villages, teammates and bridges can carry an identity as far as any logo. Compare Fresenius Medical Care, which sold it clinics in Latin America, and Mozarc Medical, the kidney-technology company it backs with Medtronic. For this guide we use a slate blue, a warm amber and linen with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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