YORK's new £900,000 kidney unit is set to open on New Year's Day next year.

It will mean up to 75 local patients with chronic kidney failure no longer have to travel to St James's Hospital in Leeds several times a week for dialysis.

York District Hospital managers cleared away the final obstacle at their board meeting by deciding the unit will be based in what is at present part of the hospital's physiotherapy and occupational therapy department.

It will mean cutting the space available to physiotherapists by up to 200 square metres - but George Wood, York Health Trust's deputy chief executive, said that could be done without reducing the department's effectiveness.

The total cost of converting part of the physiotherapy department and building the new unit will be £980,000.

Those costs have now been approved - but health trust managers are still pressing the health authority to commit itself to the estimated £1.9m a year cost of running the new unit once it is built.

Mr Wood said work would start soon on clearing space in the physiotherapy department, and the plan was for a January 1, 1999, opening of the new unit.

Initially, it will have eight 'stations' where patients can sit for dialysis. Over a year or so that is expected to increase to 12.

Patients will need to attend the hospital for three hours a day, three times a week.

Douglas Kane, the trust's business manager for medical specialities, said running at full capacity it would be able to provide dialysis for 75 patients with chronic kidney failure.

That should mean no local adult patients having to travel to Leeds for dialysis, he said - though children would still need to go to St James's.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.