Relocating Hospital Difficult, Expensive Task

Canadian Firm Specializes In Onerous Job

Last updated Saturday, March 8, 2008 6:50 PM CST in News

By Bill Lonon
The Morning News

Particularly difficult is moving the 100-plus patients. The hospital's been planning more than a year for moving day, according to Rick Barclay, vice president of human resources. Barclay, also known as the "Moving Man," is in charge of moving logistics for the hospital.

As for moving expenses, Mercy officials won't say other than to disclose the amount is included in the $125 million construction cost of the new hospital.

The physical relocation of a fully functioning hospital involves many things, not the least of which is many, many meetings.

Furniture assessments, equipment assessments, educating the staff and helping with Mercy personnel forums and meetings were just a few of checklist items, Barclay said.

The company has 15 project managers who will arrive at various times and are cross-trained to perform multiple tasks.

"We even shut down the main office and our satellite offices during the move," Gosselin said of Health Care Relocations.

The company moves between eight to 10 hospitals a year, he said. The move of the hospital is done by a calendar sequence, which allows different departments to move on different days, Gosselin said.

Moving sensitive equipment has started, with many moved by vendors of the product. Technicians disconnect the equipment, reconnect and recalibrate them to make sure they work, Barclay said. There are 60 major medical equipment pieces hospital officials consider as transferable equipment, he said, while other equipment is new. Most of the furniture for the campus is new, Barclay said, but about 1,200 office furniture items are being reused.

Mercy workers pack their individual office or department, but Health Care Relocations personnel move the packed items from the office on Walnut Street to the trucks and then to the new space at the new hospital. When the items arrive at the new hospital, department workers unpack the items. Each office is assigned special red bins with the appropriate label. The label lists the floor number, room number, the person's name and the name of the department. For small electrical items, a plastic zipper bag is provided with the same labels. The same is true for large gondolas for moving files or book shelves, and even bigger shelves can be moved by placing them on a cart.

The movers include about 25 people hired locally.

"The response and the quality of the people we hired was fantastic," Gosselin said of the premove employees. "We are bringing all of them back and are looking for more."

In addition to a 53-foot company truck, the company will also seek 20- to 25-foot trucks for lease locally.

Moving the patients is the most important task. The company provides logistics and communication, but does not physically move the patients.

That is left up to the various teams at both hospitals.

"We have a multitude of teams at both hospitals and are staffed by hospital co-workers," Barclay said. "Everybody that works here has a new job description on patient move day."

The various teams will be wearing different colored T-shirts based on the team.

"We will try to keep the time level where we will have two actual functioning hospitals to about four or five hours," Barclay said.

Patient lift teams, comprised mainly of therapy staff members, physically move a patient from a bed to a transport gurney. The transport team takes the patient from the room to the ambulance, where one of a dozen transport-registered nurses takes over. The transport nurse will travel in the ambulance from St. Mary's down 13th Street and then onto New Hope Road, which will have a special lane for the ambulances.

The transport nurse will be with the patient until he or she is settled in a room, Barclay said, "and then jumps back on the next ambulance back to Walnut Street."

The Rogers Police Department will control the traffic and stop lights for the ambulance crews from Bentonville, Bella Vista and Rogers who will work the move. The ambulance crews, police and fire departments have held two mock patient moves, Barclay said. The hospital plans to use 10 ambulances for the move.

"We're asking families of patients and the public to use Poplar Street and Dixieland so they would not be co-mingling with the ambulances during the move," Barclay said.

"We've really done some planning for the ICU patients," he said. "We're going to stagger those moves to every 20 minutes instead of regular patients, which we will move every four to eight minutes."

He said there will be one ICU nurse for every ICU patient who will go with the patient from hospital to hospital.

At 6 a.m. on March 16, the emergency room at Mercy Medical Center will open just as the emergency room at St. Mary's closes permanently.

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