OCALA KIDNEY GROUP, INC.
OCALA, FLORIDA

Ocala Kidney Group has been serving Marion County since 1984. Established with the vision of providing world class care for many of the community’s most ill patients, the physicians in the group in those early years provided not only nephrology (kidney) care, but were some of the first to offer board certified Critical Care in the local hospitals. Dr. Locay was the first of our physicians to come out of a nephrology fellowship at the University of Miami School of Medicine, and joined Ocala Kidney Group in 1994. He is a leader in the local medical community, and has at various times served as Chief of Staff, Chief of Medicine and in other roles at Munroe Regional Medical Center. In addition, he was instrumental in forming Ocala Kidney Group’s research arm, Discovery Medical Research. Dr. Locay is Board Certified in Nephrology and Internal Medicine, and serves as the Medical Director for the DaVita Ocala East Hemodialysis Unit. Dr. Locay’s wife and family are all very active in the community, and have with their church done a number of mission trips to Central America over the years. Dr. Suresh has been with the Ocala Kidney Group since 1998, and is widely acknowledged as one of the most conscientious and focused patient advocates practicing in Ocala. In addition to Nephrology, he has maintained his Board Certification in Critical Care Medicine, and is regularly called to the hospital ICU to consult on the communities most challenging and fragile patients. He also serves as the Medical Director for the DaVita Ocala West Hemodialysis Unit. Dr. Suresh and his wife have lived in Ocala since 1998, and their two daughters are academic stars in the International Baccalaureate program, as well as having been active in a number of productions at the Ocala Civic Theatre over the years. After medical school in Lagos, Nigeria, Dr. Nwakoby returned to his roots in New York City for Residency and Nephrology Fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx. He was regularly at the top of his academic classes, and was Intern of the Year and Chief Medical Resident in those respective programs. He could have joined any nephrology practice in the country, and chose to come to the Ocala Kidney Group in 2002. He has been a consistent advocate for the nephrology patients in Marion County, is loved by his patients, and tremendously well regarded in the Ocala Medical Community. Dr. Nwakoby is Board Certified in both Internal Medicine and Nephrology, and serves as the Medical Director for the DaVita Ocala North Hemodialysis Unit. Dr. Rogers’ academic career included medical school at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. He completed an Internal Medicine Residency at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, MA, and a Nephrology fellowship at the University of Miami. He joined the Ocala Kidney Group in 2003, and in 2007 was able to become the first partner in the group to train to perform interventional procedures on patient dialysis vascular accesses. He has been entirely focused on this work since 2008, and performs the procedures in both of the Ocala Kidney Group locations where these procedures are performed – Leesburg, FL, as well as the Dialysis Vascular Access Center in Gainesville, FL. Dr. Rogers is nationally recognized as one of the most prolific and successful nephrologists performing these services in the country. He is Board Certified in Nephrology. Dr. Vaghela left a post as an associate professor in the kidney transplantation department at the University of Florida to join Ocala Kidney Group in 2007. Board Certified in both Nephrology and Internal Medicine, he also has a sub-specialty area of concentration in kidney transplantation, which he attained through additional training throughout his medical career, and through a special additional fellowship he undertook at UCLA Medical Center. Throughout all his years of training and practice, though, his primary focus remains the care of his patients. Among the many academic achievements he attained over the years, he is perhaps most proud of the “Barbara Sloan Patient Comfort Award” achieved in his residency for outstanding compassion and care of patients. Dr. Vaghela is Board Certified in both Nephrology and Internal Medicine, and serves as the Medical Director for the DaVita Silver Springs Shores Hemodialysis Unit. Dr. Kovalchuk gained automatic entry into medical school in his native Ukraine in recognition of his accomplishments as the most accomplished chemistry student in the entire country that year. This was typical of the honors awarded him in his subsequent academic career, which included residency at the Yale-affiliated Danbury Hospital, and nephrology fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore in the Bronx, NYC. He found time along the way to also earn a Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology and International Health from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Kovalchuk is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Nephrology, and has been with Ocala Kidney Group since 2009. He also serves as the Medical Director for the DaVita Acute (i.e. hospital inpatient) dialysis program. Michigan was important for Dr. Chitumalla; along with his medical degrees, he also met and married his wife there. They have lived in Ocala with their two young children since Dr. Chitumalla joined Ocala Kidney Group in 2011. Dr. Saila Ventra studied Medicine, Surgery and Pediatrics in her native India before her Internal Medicine residency at the Aurora Health Care System in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She then moved to Harvard’s prestigious Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center for Nephrology Fellowship. She joined Ocala Kidney Group in 2011, and along with her husband and two young sons have settled right in to the Ocala community.