The Red House Family Practice
“RED House Family Practice has a long history dating back to when my father came to Mallow in 1946 after the war. He worked in the beet factory and the practice was established in the Red House in Shortcastle, with a subsidiary practice in Bellevue and another in Ballyclough.
It’s all about dealing with people, we know the families and the long term relationship we have with our patients is what makes this worthwhile. These are the key elements of how we develop things into the future and it also helps us cut down the number of investigations we need because we understand the family histories. We place great emphasis on home care and the ability to keep people at home where possible, especially working with the palliative care team where we would aim to ensure that at the end of their lives people are comfortable and in their own homes.
In 2001, when the Primary Care Strategy was published, it was a firm belief of ours in the practice that we could deliver a lot more if we were supported and had a better structure and better infrastructure as well. Following a discussion with the other practices in town, we decided to aim towards establishing the Centre where we are now.
One of the driving forces for setting up MPHC was the fact that we wanted to provide more pre hospital services thereby cutting down the amount of time that our patients spend in hospital and that’s been largely successful.
We started in 2003 and the work that went on before we came out here in 2010 was seven years of hard slog, getting things together and trying to deliver the vision and the image. We’re very proud of what we’ve achieved here with so many different people providing various services - especially with the HSE where up to thirty different units all came together.
Indeed, one of our proudest achievements is that the Centre caters for both physically and mentally ill patients, so no stigma is attached, no matter what people’s individual illness may be.
The Red House Family Practice has a long history in providing chronic disease management, we see this as one of the necessary elements into the future, so our important programmes are our diabetic, heart watch, and coronary risk intervention programmes, so we provide these in house supported by the practice nurses.
We have a policy in the practice of “sick today, seen today” which is something Irish General Practice can be proud of. The GP practices here deal with over 30,000 patients and overall, MPHC would deal with well over 100,000 people through the HSE - around one thousand people come through the doors every single day”.