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Tuam Primary Care Centre

Tuam

It will be of enormous benefit to Tuam. If health care is to be delivered in the community, then the facilities must meet 21st century expectations and be capable of delivering community based healthcare for decades to come.

- Sean Canney, Junior Minister and Galway East TD

  • Primary care
  • 2600 Sqm

Tuam Primary Care Centre

Tuam’s urban population may be just over three thousand people but with more than five and a half thousand rural residents, the new primary care centre (PCC) will provide a vital service to a much wider community. The 2,600sqm, two-storey centre is being built on land at the former Grove Hospital.

The new centre will be a one-stop shop for community care in the region and the base for a wide range of community-based services including GP surgeries, dentistry, physiotherapy, social work, occupational therapy and public health nursing amongst others.

The PCC is being built for the Health Service Executive (HSE) who had already taken the project through design and planning before asking Prime to review the plans to ensure they represented best value, innovation, quality and future-proofing in design.

The team at Prime used its extensive experience in healthcare planning to make a number of recommendations and improvements. These included reorienting the reception and dividing waiting areas into two separate zones, one for Primary Care Teams and one for GPs. This has the benefit of improving wayfinding for patients and visitors whilst ensuring clinical facilities are located adjacent to their allocated waiting rooms.

Prime has also aided the local authority and HSE by demonstrating how a planned GP suite extension could be used, planning the space to include a waiting area, surgeries, offices and nurses room.

A number of practical improvements have been made to the layout to ensure the centre runs as efficiently as possible, including the relocation of rooms to allow for closer adjacency to corresponding facilities, for example, the dental plant room is now adjacent to the dental suite. These alterations enable a fluid workflow and improve experience for staff, allowing smooth transitions throughout the working day.

The new PCC is currently being constructed by JJ Rhatigan on behalf of Balfour Beatty Ireland and is expected to be operational by 2018.

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