Over €3.5m invested in St Francis Health village
"Pursuing medical excellence at affordable prices": Director
Mark Gordon, the new owner of the St Francis Health Village, has invested over €3.5 million and created 25 extra jobs since he took over what was formerly the hospital and nursing home run by the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady.
With a background in running the biggest hospitals in the UK, in both the NHS and private sector, Mark is on a mission to make the Mullingar-based private hospital the leading facility for health care in the country.
Huge finance has been spent in upgrading the hospital, both in equipment and infrastructure, with a new emergency department set to open in the coming weeks, while in the near future, St Francis is about to become the first to house an autism diagnostic unit in Ireland in conjunction with Irish Autism Action.
"All of it comes out of our own empathy for our own family having to stay in hospital," Mark told the Westmeath Independent this week.
"We have a lot of loyal consultants that have been here for a very long time, but first and foremost we have probably the best nursing staff that I've seen anywhere. And our patient feedback demonstrates that every single day," continued the VFM Healthcare director.
"We are accessible to everybody, there are payment plans that we can work out with patients, we're basically bringing world-class medical treatment to all, it's not just insured people," he added. "This place has got excellent facilities, excellent staff, excellent infrastructure, we're aiming for an overall pleasant patient experience.
The healthcare facility also has planning permission for a new four-storey building in the next five years, while in the shorter term they will commence construction on a new 120-bed elderly care home, in conjunction with the 90-odd beds already available. Among the services already available at St Francis are a cardiac assessment unit, pharmacy, neuro department, respiratory function unit and a speech and language testing area. "We won't be finished all of this for another year or so, we are pursuing medical excellence at affordable prices, which I think doesn't exist in Ireland at the minute, but it does here.
"We are providing a state-of-the-art health service with leading medical equipment, as well as local employment, and minimising patient journey time.
St Francis now has one of the best CT scanning systems in Ireland, covering all requirements, meaning patients can been seen immediately if they've got a condition before surgery, the multi-disciplinary surgeons at Ballinderry can receive all the necessary data from this system.
"We've invested heavily in the up to the minute equipment, all the labour involved in this is our own labour, we employ local people, with a good specialist team. So we're hoping to make Mullingar the new centre of excellence," he finished.
