Hospital prepares for big move

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Story Published: Mar 11, 2008 at 5:30 PM PDT

By Joe Raineri

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Eugene -

Here's something most people can agree with moving is tough! all of the boxes and unpacking...but what about moving an entire hospital patients included?

That's what the staff at Sacred Heart Medical Center spent the day practicing.

Sacred Heart will move three hundred patients in just ten hours when they open the new Riverbend Medical Center in Springfield this summer. They say they'll start the move at 7:05 a-m... and they'll be done by 5:00.

"We're doing our first what we call our mock move we're doing intensive planning to assure from a patients perspective that it is safe for both the patients and families," says Jill Haggard-Green Chief Operating Officer for PeaceHealth.

During the August move the hospital will have medical staff to assure everything runs smoothly. Another key the transfer the timing.

"One of the critical things we have is how many patients to move in an hour we have three staging areas and we'll have seven ambulances at each staging area," says David Whipple with PeacHealth Oregon region.

A task they'll try to preform in just ten hours. This was the first of three practice moves another is scheduled in May and July.

July's drill will be a full scale move, without the patients.
During the move, a group of medical staff will be brought in to take care of the day to day activity at sacred heart.

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