An exciting new service for kidney and diabetes patients will open in Tottenham next week.
The Tottenham Hale Kidney and Diabetes Centre, run by the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, will be the UK’s largest dialysis unit outside of a hospital and with 48 dialysis stations, it will have the capacity to treat 270 patients.
The new centre, which is due to open on 14 April 2014, will replace the dialysis service currently offered at the North Middlesex University Hospital in Edmonton, which will close on 13 April.
Five Royal Free consultants will run clinics at the Tottenham Hale centre, with a focus on self-care, home dialysis and home therapies.
The second phase of the project will see additional patients from Haringey who are currently treated in Highgate, Mary Rankin or Edgware dialysis units move to the Tottenham Hale centre in May.
Other services offered at the Tottenham Hale centre, in Daneland Walk, Hale Village, include a low clearance service for patients with progressive kidney disease, with support from dieticians, psychologists and renal consultants. The service aims to increase the chance of patients receiving a kidney transplant and to help more patients to receive therapies in their own homes.
The centre will offer follow-up clinics for patients who have had a kidney transplant, transplant assessment clinics, renal vascular clinics and a diabetic eye screening service.
In addition the Royal Free is planning to provide services from the Tottenham Hale centre such as GP and patient education sessions, diabetes clinics (in partnership with the North Middlesex Hospital), Citizens Advice Bureau clinics and joint renal and heart failure clinics.
John Connolly, clinical director of renal services at the Royal Free, said: “This wonderful new centre, will offer dialysis and diabetes patients a range of services all under one roof. We are thrilled that we can now offer diabetes clinics, transplant assessment clinics, renal vascular clinics and much more in our new centre.
“This is the biggest dialysis unit outside a hospital in the whole country and it is wonderful for the people of Tottenham to have it right on their doorstep.”