The HSE West has held preliminary talks with a private renal clinic in Galway in an effort to reduce the pressure on the main dialysis unit in the west at Merlin Park Hospital.
Dialysis treatment is being provided on a 24-hour basis at the Merlin Park unit due to increased patient demand for the service.
The already busy unit has come under increased pressure since the Mid-Western Regional Hospital stopped taking new dialysis patients and is currently treating a number of patients from Limerick.
The dialysis unit has been staffed on a 24-hour basis for many years, traditionally to facilitate treatment of emergency cases. Over the past two years, however, due to an increase in the number of patients receiving dialysis, staff have been providing an overnight dialysis service.
The HSE West has confirmed that it has been involved in talks with the Wellstone Renal Clinic which opened in Ballybrit, Galway about 18 months ago.
A HSE West spokeswoman said: "We have had preliminary discussions with the Wellstone clinic in the context of reconfiguring the service [at Merlin Park] to abolish the night shift and provide a more patient-friendly service. In recent months, Mayo General Hospital has expanded capacity and this has reduced pressure on the Galway unit. A number of patients have also received kidney transplants and come off haemodialysis treatment."
The spokeswoman pointed out that patients were also offered the choice between haemodialysis, which is carried out in a renal unit, and peritoneal dialysis which can be self-administered in the patient's home.
The average number of patients receiving dialysis at Merlin Park Hospital each week has risen from 39 in 2000 to 71 in 2006. The total number of dialysis treatments delivered each year has increased from 6,160 in 2000 to 11,391 in 2006.
The unit is dialysing 83 patients - a number of whom are patients of the former mid-western health board region.
"We are currently examining how we can reconfigure the delivery of this service in order to abolish the night shift for elective dialysis to provide a more patient-centred service," said the HSE spokeswoman.
The Wellstone clinics have been developed by healthcare supplier PEI, to target regionally based patients with renal failure.
The first two clinics opened in Kilkenny and Galway and the company said it planned to locate units throughout the State.
The new Galway clinic, which is located in the Parkmore Industrial Park, is a 16-patient station site which can cater for up to 64 patients on a regular one-week cycle. The unit has been treating holiday dialysis patients since it opened and has just begun to take patients from Limerick.
A spokeswoman for the Wellstone clinic said: "PEI is happy to work with the HSE to provide dialysis services to patients from Galway and surrounding areas at the Wellstone clinic. We are currently contracted to treat up to 10 patients from the mid-west region as part of a short-term arrangement."
The chairman of the Irish Kidney Association, Mark Murphy, said the concept of using commercial dialysis clinics was a route that many European countries have had to go down.
He said the HSE had no option but to use the Wellstone clinic in Galway as the only other option was to send patients to Beaumont Hospital in Dublin for treatment.
