The components of renal care
The project mapped the haemodialysis service delivery within Renal Services in Newcastle using the Sustainable Healthcare Coalition’s Care Pathway Guidance, to use life cycle assessment approaches to understand the whole environmental footprint associated with activities – from manufacture, through service delivery to disposal – and identify opportunities to reduce the environmental impact of the service. The project intended: firstly, to help Newcastle Hospitals and other renal centres understand what sustainable haemodialysis might look like; secondly, to inform the development of metrics, recognised by the renal community and industry, alike, to allow between-centre comparisons and; lastly, that it will identify the key intervention points that could be targeted to achieve the goal of sustainable haemodialysis across the NHS.
The NUTH – Sustainable Healthcare Coalition collaboration delivered a good picture of what in-centre haemodialysis looks like through a sustainability lens, but it is only one part of the whole renal care pathway puzzle. Further work is needed to assess the footprints, and opportunities and barriers to change, for the other components of kidney care. The journey may have started, but it is not over by any means and the need to get on with finding sustainable healthcare solutions and implement them at scale is getting ever more urgent as we try to improve care for renal patients and stay within a 1.5°C world.