BARWON Health has officially opened a new renal clinic with improved facilities and a targeted focus on promoting a self-care model of home-based dialysis.
The renal service, which provides about 7000 outpatient consultations per year, moved into the new building on the corner of Swanston and Little Myers Streets in August, with improved access and space for visiting patients providing a cleaner, safer and more spacious unit.
The building features a dedicated education room for pre-dialysis, transplant education and preparation, increased consulting rooms for nephrologists and allied health staff, a more spacious home training area with resources for future growth, and a bedroom area designed to train patients for their transition to home for nocturnal dialysis in the self-care model.
Barwon Health CEO Professor Ruth Salom said the new unit brought clinicians together to better promote the benefit of home-based therapy.
“The infrastructure is now in place to eventually adopt an emerging model of care that allows home patients to independently undergo dialysis without a clinician,” she said.
“This facility is able to house nephrologists, educators and home dialysis on one site to better promote home dialysis as the optimum treatment for patients undertaking dialysis, with a natural flow and referral of patients from the nephrology consult rooms, through to the dialysis educator and into the home dialysis unit.
“Patients can now be introduced to the concept of home dialysis as the first option to consider, rather than facility-based dialysis.
“Planting the seed for home dialysis early during the education and preparation process will avoid relying on facility-based dialysis, which should increase the number of patients moving to a home-based therapy when that’s an option.”
