Q & A: Developing future kidney services
Q: I am writing from a large hospital without a renal unit, offering general nephrology and liaison with critical care for acute RRT. I work with a renal unit in a neighbouring town which provides end-stage RRT.Over several years there have been initiatives to develop a more extensive service on site, to support our tertiary services as well as the local ESRF population but each one has foundered

National tender for Peritoneal Dialysis
Peritoneal Dialysis is in the spotlight. NHS Kidney Care produced the specification for PD describing the pathway of care from shared decision making through training to home or assisted dialysis last month. Following on from that piece of work the group have drawn up a national PD tender that will be published shortly in the European Journal. This tender will allow kidney services and networks

Establishing new kidney units
The model of renal care in England is really quite unusual with only 52 kidney centres for a population of 50 million. International health comparisons are always interesting but you don’t need to go as far as the USA or indeed Italy or Germany with its 1200 units. Those are very different systems. Looking closer to home, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have between them 26 kidney centres

Does improving quality save money?
All bets are off. We need to move away from the NHS being built for growth to being able to sustain itself in a prolonged limitation of resources … the NHS will need to make efficiency savings of £15-20 billion from 2011-14 NHS CEO David Nicholson 4 June 2009.I am just back from the EDTNA meeting in Reading, and what a fantastic programme Rebecca Kinton and her team put together. I was invited to

Bedtime reading: NICE Guidance on Depression in CKD
Under-recognition of depression remains a major problem. As does the assessment of depression in the presence of chronic physical problems. NICE have issued a new guideline on depression focussing on adults with chronic physical health problems.Kidney disease figures prominently in many sections of the report and the recommendations are highly relevant to the care of those with chronic kidney