Essentia Health moved patients into new St. Mary Medical Center
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Essentia Health finally finished moving patients from the legacy St. Mary’s Medical center. They are also preparing to open their doors for visitors and family on Monday morning, July 31st.
On Sunday, Essentia Health moved 232 patients across four different routes to the new St. Mary’s medical center along sky walks. Dr. Bill Heegaard, president of East Essentia, said that more than half of the patients were already moved into their new rooms along with their equipment by Sunday afternoon.
“We are ahead of our schedule. So we had planned about 9 hours. And what I’d say is we’re ahead of that and it’s going exactly as we planned,” Dr. Heegaard said. “There’s been no significant safety issues, and I think people are feeling great. And I give that total credit to our team. It’s a really experienced team. So we’re excited. This day has happened and it happened safely.”
Dr. Heegaard said the reason why the move went so successfully is through several long periods of planning and hard teamwork. “It’s based on months and months and months of training that we’ve been doing.” Dr. Heegaard said. “So we’ve been doing simulations. We brought all our teams over to make sure that they’re comfortable with all the equipment are planning and all that logistics that we had were exactly well worth it. And we’ve done it in a safe way, which was our number one priority.”
The first patient transferred on Sunday was Bethany Johnson. She is expecting the birth of her second child in just a few weeks.
“I feel honored, I get to participate and that our community has this new hospital and I’ve been treated really well here,” Johnson said. “I’m excited. I’m glad it’s finally here because people have been talking about it since I got here and I couldn’t really, like settle into my room because it’s like we’re going to be moving.”
For more information about Essentia Health moving patients you can look here. However, for other stories about Essentia Health you can read more here.