Grandview Medical Center holding dress rehearsal of hospital transfer

There will be fleets of ambulances with police escorts traveling between Trinity Medical Center and the new Grandview Medical Center on Thursday, Sept. 24. The ambulances, however, won’t be transporting patients.

In order to prepare for the big move between campuses on Oct. 10, there will be a dress rehearsal along the route from Trinity to I-20 to I-459 to Grandview’s campus on U.S. 280.

The mass move of patients from Trinity Medical Center to the new Grandview Medical Center has taken more than a year of planning and meetings, said Chief Nursing Officer Andy Romine. Thursday’s practice run is one of two tests; the other was a paper run on Sept. 15.

Nurses also started training on Sept. 14 to get comfortable with any ambulance equipment.

“Most nurses are not familiar with riding in the back of an ambulance, so we’re spending this week and next week making sure that those nurses that will be in the ambulances are accustomed and knowledgeable about what equipment, what resources are available,” Romine said.

Starting at 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 10, packages of ambulances will leave Trinity Medical Center and make their way to Grandview. Every 15 minutes, four ambulances, a moving truck and a police escort will make the trip.

“If you think about a presidential motorcade, this is similar,” said Jim Coker, director of Jefferson County’s Emergency Management Agency.

Romine said the move is not expected to affect traffic because the ambulance departures will be spaced out.

There will be two police cars per group of ambulances, one in front and one behind, and all parts of the group be able to communicate.

“The first thing you always concern yourself with is good communications,” Coker said. “We do have several different routes of communication set up.”

If everything goes well, Romine said he expects the Oct. 10 move to be completed by mid-afternoon. The timeline, however, depends on patient care and if anything unexpected comes up.

“Our primary goal is to keep our patients safe above all else, and that will dictate our timeline, that’ll dictate a lot of the move,” Romine said. “We’re flexible enough to be able to accommodate and change our move plan if we need to in order to keep our patients safe.”