Patients at St. Vincent Hospital will no longer have to make time-consuming trips to the Ottawa Hospital for life-saving dialysis treatment.
A new hemodialysis clinic opened at Saint-Vincent Hospital that can treat up to 16 people per day, using four dialysis machines.
The machines treat people with kidney disease, pumping blood through filters that remove toxins – a task normally carried out by healthy kidneys.
Before the clinic opened, St. Vincent patients would take 15-minute rides to the Ottawa Hospital, up to three times per week. The trips were complicated by sometimes two to four-hour long waits for an ambulance ride.
Patients at St. Vincent had to travel by ambulance because of their condition.
The treatment itself takes about four hours.
The clinic, funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and the Ottawa hospital, cost about $450,000.
There is room at the clinic for two more dialysis machines, which would allow treatment of up to 24 people a day and 36 if an evening shift is added.
The clinic is staffed by doctors and nurses from the Civic and General hosiptals.