December 14, 2009 – 4:43 pm
We all know how complex it is when you move from one house to another BUT what is it like to move an active hospital to a brand new location. Read on and you will see.
At 4:15 p.m. Monday, the 114th and final patient arrives via ambulance from Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center’s campus in South Bend to its new $355 million facility in Mishawaka, making the hospital’s momentous move complete.

A command center at the new hospital staffed by about 30 employees, from computer network specialists to members of the hospital’s corporate headquarters, served as the heartbeat of the move. Staff members there tracked the precise location of the patients who were en route from the old location to the new via 15 ambulances. Patients arriving were greeted just inside the ambulance entrance to the emergency room at the new hospital, checked in and taken to their rooms.
The command center also served as the problem-solving headquarters for the move. Phone calls from staff members were referred to a variety of specialists who were manning the center.
Keely Paston, “issue coordinator” for the command center, said most phone calls resulted in easy resolutions. For example, several staff members called because they couldn’t find a parking spot, she said, or they needed medical supplies on their unit. The command center opened last Friday and has been staffed continuously since. It’ll remain open until this Friday, Paston said.
Early Monday afternoon, Paston said the move had so far gone seamlessly because so much careful planning had gone into every detail during the past two years.
For Kay Naragon, a nurse in the labor and delivery department and a 29-year employee of SJRMC, Monday was an exciting day, too. “I’ve been on both ends of the move,” she said of having packed up medical supplies at the old hospital and unpacked them to stock the labor and delivery rooms at the new location.
She enthusiastically pointed out some of the features of the new rooms for laboring moms, including the wall-mounted shower massages in the bathroom for women experiencing back labor and the hookups for portable birthing tubs.
Meanwhile, back in the emergency room just before 3 p.m., the 100th patient to be transferred from the old campus to the new was heralded through the door by several clapping employees.
Read more here.
Posted in -Medical News | 2 Comments »
Tags:
hospital moving,
medical supplies