“We are in an arrangement with a private doctor to install a dialysis unit at the hospital early next year,” Bill Pionsett, CEO of Nuttall Hospital, told the Sunday Observer.

“It is a start-up situation, much like St Joseph’s,”

he added.

There is a combined 12 dialysis units across the island offering dialysis treatment, professor of nephrology at the University Hospital Dr Everard Barton told the Sunday Observer.

Last September, St Joseph’s Hospital established a $10-million eight-station dialysis unit at the private eastern Kingston hospital.

The St Joseph’s unit, according to hospital administrators, will be able to serve up to 16 patients per day.

“The fact is that dialysis services are actually lacking in Jamaica so this (unit at St Joseph’s) complements what already exists in the island,” Fabian Brown, chief executive officer at the hospital, said at the opening.

Patients will be charged a total of $7,000 per session, a fee which Brown said was “one of the best” industry-wide.

Meanwhile, at Nuttall, Pionsett said that five machines would be installed at the Cross Roads hospital, however a charge for renal patients has not yet been arrived at.

fosterp@jamaicaobserver.com