Tuam medical campus will see €40m investment

Tuam will soon be home to a €40 million health campus employing around 300 full-time and part-time staff.

When all of the developments are complete within the next few years, the campus located on the twelve-acre Grove Hospital site will have a primary care centre, ambulance base, mental day hospital and a community nursing home.

It will represent an investment of more than €40 million in health services in Tuam that began with the opening of the ambulance base two years ago while the Primary Care Centre opened its doors last December.

The new Primary Care Centre will serve a population of over 20,000 people and the services provided include public health nurses, community general nurses, a physiotherapist, dieticians and occupational therapists and they will work in conjunction with local GPs.

The centre will also accommodate around 10,000 x-rays each year – eliminating trips to Galway city for such a service – while it is also the base for the out-of-hours GP service Westdoc.

The next phase of the development involves the renovation of the old Grove Hospital building for the provision of a mental day hospital along with a disability unit.

Planning permission has been secured for this development to proceed and it is expected that works will commence very shortly.

Meanwhile, a millionaire philanthropist has offered to provide a whopping €7 million for the development of a 50 community nursing home on the same site – making it a ‘one stop shop’ for health services in the region.

The businessman will provide the funding once the HSE have a commitment from the Department of Health that the additional monies to build the €12 million nursing home are forthcoming.

“The town has all the health services, bar a mainstream hospital, within the one campus and there is no town of its size across the country that can boast such facilities,” said Deputy Sean Canney.

The Galway East TD said that it was his understanding Tuam will now have the biggest health campus outside any of the major cities as well as providing upwards of 300 jobs.

“While I appreciate that the vast majority of these jobs are not new but it is something similar to Tuam being the beneficiary of a major decentralisation programme.

“As well as the town getting some of the best medical facilities, it will have a huge economic spin-off for Tuam. The fact that 10,000 x-rays will be carried out in the Tuam will be of huge benefit,” Deputy Canney added.

Works are soon to commence on the mental day hospital. This is to provide a mental health services facility, an early intervention and disability services facility and shared services for the HSE West.

It is proposed to carry out the works in two phases. The first phase will involve the part demolition of a two-storey extension that was constructed in the 1960s and the refurbishment of the ground floor and first floor of the existing hospital building.