Primary care complex opens to patients

Credit: This story was first seen on the BBC

A new £105m hospital is opening to patients in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, the BBC reports.

The Omagh Hospital and Primary Care Complex provides a range of hospital and community healthcare services together in one place.

It replaces the 118-year-old Tyrone County Hospital which will close its doors following the transfer of 29 patients to the new hospital.

Four GP practices, currently based at Omagh Health Centre, will move into the new complex.

The site will also include community mental health services, podiatry, family planning, community dental, paediatric physiotherapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy.

The Western Health and Social Care Trust said more than £4.5m had been invested in new equipment and technologies to improve patient care, including a new CT scanner.

Joann McCullagh, the outpatients manager in Omagh, said patients would benefit from having everything under one roof.

“I would anticipate we will be moving very much towards a future ‘one-stop shop’ approach,” she said.

“We will have your GP referrals, you will have all of your physical and clinical aspects of that and you will also have your supporting clinical services, your mental health services, your women and child care services, your GUM [sexual health] services, and all of your expert and very wide-ranging outpatient clinics.”

She said the hospital would also be able to provide new services to help tackle waiting lists across Northern Ireland, including orthopaedic and ophthalmology services.

The Tyrone County Hospital, which opened in 1899, lost its acute services in 2009 after the Western Health Trust said it had struggled to recruit staff.

The South West Acute Hospital, which cost £280m, opened in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, in 2012.

The new hospital in Omagh has a 24-hour Urgent Care and Treatment Centre which provides cardiac assessment, a treatment room, x-ray and scans.

A ward area contains 40 single en-suite rooms for a mix of patients in recovery and rehabilitation as well as patients receiving palliative care.