PEISome receiving hemodialysis on P.E.I. will no longer need to spend hours in hospital to get the treatment. Prince Edward Island will start offering at-home hemodialysis for Islanders in need of them, making the province the last in Canada to begin doing so. P.E.I. is the last province in Canada to start offering the at-home treatmentJenna Banfield · CBC News · Posted: Oct 10, 2025 8:33 PM EDT | Last Updated: 6 hours agoP.E.I. joins other provinces in offering home hemodialysis treatmentPeople on P.E.I. who need hemodialysis have a new option for how to get it: Instead of hours of treatment at the hospital each week, some people can take the machines home and get treatment while they sleep. CBC’s Gwyneth Egan reports. A new program allows Islanders who need hemodialysis to get treatment from home, rather than spending hours in hospital each week.Hemodialysis is a treatment for kidney disease. It works by taking blood out of the patient, filtering out waste and water through a dialyser unit, and cycling it back into the patient.With home treatment, the machine can run overnight while someone sleeps. Andy Worth, who has been getting hemodialysis treatment for about a year and a half, said he is “ecstatic” about this development.“I get better treatment, because it’s over a longer period of time so I feel much better.”Worth currently comes to the hospital for hemodialysis three times a week, for four hours each time. He’s one of the patients being trained by healthcare professionals to use and take home the machine that administers the treatment.”It just opens the doors… I’m not here for three days a week. I’m doing it at night. So it just opens the days so I can continue to do things.” Worth says being able to do treatments at home ‘opens the door’ for him to do more things in his day-to-day life. (Aaron Adetuyi/CBC)The Home Hemodialysis Program is a collaboration between Health P.E.I. and the University Health Network in Toronto. Until the program launched this summer, P.E.I. was the only province that didn’t have at-home treatment. Lauren Wry is the lead RN for the program.She said it takes about 10 weeks of training for patients to be able to safely administer hemodialysis at home, but the results make it worthwhile.“I’ve seen the impact that coming into dialysis has on these patients. It’s like a part time job for people coming in here and getting dialysis, and then they leave and you know, they don’t feel great,” she said.Lauren Wry is the lead RN for the new Home Hemodialysis Program. (Aaron Adetuyi/CBC)”So being able to do it at home, especially at night where it’s not impacting their day-to-day life, it means a lot.”Benefits patients and hospitalsDr. Michael Girsberger, a nephrologist, says roughly 130 people on P.E.I. require hemodialysis. He is aiming for at least 30 per cent of them to be able to do it from home, and said it would benefit both patients and hospitals.”It’s way more expensive for the system to treat patients in-centre… so that’s also a benefit, obviously frees up money for other areas in health care,” he said.Dr. Michael Girsberger says patients will not pay to start performing at-home treatments; the program lends the machines to them. The machines will eventually be taken back if a patient is no longer in need of it. (Aaron Adetuyi/CBC)In order for a patient to do hemodialysis at home, their living space needs to be properly equipped. Requirements include access to adequate water supply and drainage, and electricity on dedicated breakers.Alicia Madore, a biomedical engineering technologist with Health P.E.I., said they offer corrective maintenance — if, for example, a pump happens to fail, they would come to repair it — as well as preventative maintenance. “We try to do our retrofits in a way that it’s not hindering the resale value of your property and the least amount of interference with the existing structure.”ABOUT THE AUTHORJenna Banfield is an associate producer for CBC Prince Edward Island. She can be reached at jenna.banfield@cbc.caWith files from Gwyneth Egan
P.E.I. joins other provinces offering home hemodialysis treatment
