An­na-Lisa Paul

Pa­tients with re­nal fail­ure who re­quire dial­y­sis treat­ment will no longer have to wait months to re­ceive that treat­ment.

Re­lief is com­ing as the Min­istry of Health has au­tho­rised 16 pri­vate health in­sti­tu­tions to pro­vide dial­y­sis treat­ment with­in five days of the min­istry's re­ceipt of an ap­pli­ca­tion from a pa­tient.

Health Min­is­ter Fuad Khan made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing the launch of phase two of the Ex­ter­nal Pa­tient Pro­gramme (EPP) at the min­istry's Park Street, Port-of-Spain, head of­fice yes­ter­day.

He said pa­tients could ap­ply through the EPP or the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (RHA) for as­sis­tance, fol­low­ing which they would be re­ferred to a pri­vate cen­tre close to their lo­ca­tion.

Re­gard­ing pay­ment for the treat­ment ses­sions, Khan said each pa­tient would be pro­vid­ed with a cheque so they could sign off on the pay­ment im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter re­ceiv­ing treat­ment. In this way, he said there would be ac­count­abil­i­ty, as the req­ui­site checks and bal­ances would be en­forced.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, pa­tients di­ag­nosed with re­nal fail­ure had to wait for as long as two years to ac­cess grants from the min­istry.

In many in­stances, pa­tients were forced to utilise their own funds to ac­cess treat­ment, which could cost as much as $2,000 per ses­sion, with some pa­tients re­quir­ing as many as three ses­sions per week.

Ad­mit­ting it was not an ide­al for pa­tients to be wait­ing for months for treat­ment at one of the pre­vi­ous four gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed fa­cil­i­ties, Khan said he was forced to in­ter­vene be­cause those in­sti­tu­tions were over­whelmed by the num­ber of re­quests for treat­ment ses­sions.

In­sti­tu­tions over­whelmed

Khan al­so ap­pealed to cit­i­zens to re­vise their di­et and sug­ar in­take in or­der to avoid be­com­ing di­a­bet­ic or hy­per­ten­sive.

Claim­ing that younger peo­ple were now seek­ing treat­ment for a host of dis­eases which were pre­vi­ous­ly di­ag­nosed in peo­ple 50 years and old­er, Khan said, "Be­cause of the large vol­ume of peo­ple need­ing dial­y­sis, the pub­lic health in­sti­tu­tions are over­whelmed and we are try­ing to in­crease the hours for dial­y­sis."

He said RHA heads had been man­dat­ed to ex­plore longer work­ing hours, as well as the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pro­vid­ing treat­ment on the week­ends.

In the first quar­ter of 2014, the min­istry spent $5.2 mil­lion to pro­vide dial­y­sis treat­ment to 352 pa­tients.

Khan said this fig­ure had in­creased dur­ing the sec­ond and third quar­ters, and that a to­tal of $26.6 mil­lion had been spent by the end of last year on dial­y­sis treat­ment for 1,800 pa­tients. This fig­ure does not in­clude pa­tients who were ap­proved and are still await­ing treat­ment.

He said the 16 cen­tres had pro­vid­ed a "rea­son­able" fig­ure for each treat­ment ses­sion but not­ed that the min­istry was con­tin­u­ing its ef­fort to pre­pare two 100-bed wards at hos­pi­tals in the north and south to ac­com­mo­date pa­tients re­quir­ing ex­ten­sive med­ical treat­ment.

In ad­di­tion to the ac­count­abil­i­ty of this new ini­tia­tive, Khan said sim­i­lar checks and bal­ances were be­ing put in place for CDAP, HIV/AIDS and On­col­o­gy pa­tients

The List

List of pri­vate health in­sti­tu­tions pro­vid­ing dial­y­sis treat­ment:

1. Bar­rack­pore Med­ical Cen­tre - 735 Pa­pourie Road, Low­er Bar­rack­pore

2. Caribbean Kid­ney and Dial­y­sis In­sti­tute Ltd - 239 West­ern Main Road, Co­corite

3. Cor­ner Stone Haemodial­y­sis Ser­vices Ltd - 206 Ca­roni Sa­van­nah Road, Char­lieville

4. Cross Cross­ing Med­ical Cen­tre Ltd - Oliv­er Av­enue, Co­conut Dri­ve, Cross Cross­ing, San Fer­nan­do

5. Freeport Med­ical Cen­tre - 105 Freeport Mis­sion Road, Freeport

6. Health Net Caribbean Ltd - 144 Munroe Road, Cunu­pia

7. IME Dial­y­sis Cen­tre - 60 Don­ald­son Street, San Fer­nan­do

8. John Hayes Memo­r­i­al Kid­ney Foun­da­tion - 20 Willis Street, Bel­mont

9. Med­corp Ltd - 18 Eliz­a­beth Street, St Clair

10. No­va Med­ical Cen­tre Ltd - 22 Mau­si­ca Road, D'Abadie

11. Princes Town Dial­y­sis Cen­tre - Rail­way Road, Princes Town

12. Trinidad Dial­y­sis Cen­tre Ltd - 49 In­de­pen­dence Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do

13. V'med Ltd - 14 Princess Mar­garet Street, San Fer­nan­do

14. West­shore Med­ical - 239 West­ern Main Road, Co­corite

15. AAND­CO Health­care Ltd - 47 Eleanor Street, Ch­agua­nas

16. Ma­jter­rence Dial­y­sis Cen­tre Ltd - 5 Uquire Road, Fire­burn, Freeport