200 patients from Manly and Mona Vale hospitals to transfer to Northern Beaches Hospital
Health authorities are leaving no stone unturned as they prepare the massive challenge of transferring 200 patients from Manly and Mona Vale hospitals to the new Northern Beaches Hospital.
Manly
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MOVING 200 patients from Manly and Mona Vale hospitals to the new northern beaches site at the end of October will be a military-style operation.
Every second will be accounted for as 200 staff transfer the estimated 120 patients from Manly and 80 from Mona Vale when Northern Beaches Hospital opens its doors at 7am on October 30.
Manly’s transfers will start at 9am on October 30 and Mona Vale’s at 9.30am on October 31.
Rehearsals for the massive operation started this week.
Practice patients were taken by ambulance from Manly Hospital to the Northern Beaches Hospital in French Forest.
The Traffic Management Centre followed the ambulance’s route transferring the lights to green to allow it a through passage.
Healthscope’s operational project manager Andrew Bott said the dry run was critical to test the team’s roles, the routes to Northern Beaches Hospital and how people were communicating throughout the process.
“Everything is planned, timed and practised, just like a military-style operation,” he said. “There will be many rehearsals before patients transfer on October 30 and 31 so everything will go smoothly and safely for everyone involved.”
Healthscope, the private operator behind the new $600 million hospital, are using Health Care Relocations, a company which specialises in transferring patients to new hospitals.
Five days before the transfer Healthscope and Manly and Mona Vale hospitals will assess patients in all wards.
On the morning of the transfer, the team will look at the final patient count.
Then the nursing team will get patients ready for the move, packing up their medications, medical records and other belongings. The patient will then be taken by trolley to the dispatch area and loaded into the ambulance and discharged.
To greet them at the main entrance of Northern Beaches Hospital will be the director of nursing Moran Wasson.
They will then be taken to their room with their transfer nurse who will hand over the patient to ward staff.
It’s estimated each transfer will take around 60 minutes, from moving patients from their ward to installing them in their new room.
The process will then be repeated until all the patients have been taken across.
Mr Bott said critically ill patients may require extra staff support on their transfers.