It's moving day at CU hospital

Tiny babies, huge equipment on way to Aurora campus

Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Thirty-eight newborns and moms went into the hospital during one era and came out in another Monday when they rode in ambulances from the University of Colorado's venerable old hospital to the gleaming new one on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora.

The neonatal move was a precursor to an even bigger one to take place Thursday through Saturday, when semis will haul more than 8,000 pieces of medical equipment and ambulances will transport 150 patients the six miles to the new campus. It's a logistical and timing challenge equivalent to the hospital's version of D-Day.

The last baby born at the old CU hospital came at 9:13 a.m. Monday after just 20 minutes of labor. "It went very well, and the ambulance ride was tranquil," mom Mayra Macias, 25, said, cuddling daughter Ashley Guadalupe Rodriguez-Macias.

The bigger test comes Thursday. Color-coded tags are being affixed to CT scans and exam tables. Wristbands are being attached to liver patients and newborns for the move from the hospital's crowded home at Ninth Avenue in east Denver.

"We have a dozen ambulances lined up, all choreographed," said Dr. Greg Stiegmann, vice president of clinical affairs. "We've figured out which streets are less bumpy. We've done some dry runs with nurses riding along. They told us they got sore rear ends from the ride."

Starting Friday, CU is scheduled to move about 50 patients a day for three days. By late Sunday, the last of the patients should be in rooms on the Anschutz Medical Campus.

"Think of it as a crescendo in a piece of music," Stiegmann said of the three-day move that will turn the Anschutz campus into the place where most of the action is.

The move of equipment must be timed so the newly arrived patients have the technology they need to get well.

"We've already moved about 40 percent of the equipment," said Antonio Ruiz, vice president of operations and facilities at CU hospital. "Between now and June 17, we will have moved 95 percent."

That includes a 10-ton Magnetic-Resonance Imaging machine.

Relocating the perfectly good equipment rather than buying everything new for the Anschutz campus will save millions of dollars, Ruiz said.

A new MRI costs about $2.25 million, and a new CT scan about the same.

The vendors who sold the equipment to CU will oversee the moves. A transportation company, however, had to be hired to move the huge MRI.

Physicists have checked the new rooms where the CT scans will go, making sure that about one-eighth inch of lead protection is built into the wallboard on the floor, ceiling and walls.

"We're coordinating with our physicists to ensure we maintain the integrity and accuracy of the equipment because, of course, patient safety is always our priority," Ruiz said.

The CT scan isn't as heavy as the MRI, but it has an expensive X-ray tube that moves electrons so fast they turn into X-rays.

"If we move the equipment and someone breaks that X-ray tube, we're out $30,000 to $50,000," Ruiz said.

The vendors carry insurance and know what they're doing, said Ruiz, who is confident the move will be accomplished with minimal jolting of critical parts.

Each piece of medical equipment must be cleaned before it leaves for Aurora, then recleaned and recalibrated once it gets there "to ensure we don't have any contamination" and can get accurate readings, Ruiz said. Surgical instruments are gas- or steam-sterilized.

The equipment from a particular unit, say, neonatal, will arrive and be checked for accuracy right before the patients from the same unit arrive. That way, there's minimal delay in services.

Some huge pieces of equipment could be moved only after walls and windows were knocked out at the old hospital.

Prestige Moving is in charge of transporting the less critical stuff - exam tables, scales, furniture.

Each patient will have a companion, Stiegmann said. For those whose ailments aren't too complex, the companion might be a family member. For those with more critical needs, a doctor and a nurse might be in the ambulance with them, as well.

"It's a little more complicated than I thought it would be," Stiegmann said.

This week, doctors won't do much in the way of elective surgeries. They'll continue to do the surgeries that must be done, and if the patient has to be transported during convalescence, so be it.

Stiegmann has a cancer patient who needs major surgery and doesn't want to wait until next week. The patient, he said, is fine with having to be moved, if it comes to that.

For a couple of days, CU will divert new patients to other hospitals. The emergency room will be closed for one day, then all the ER action will be at the Anschutz campus.

It's not as if the hospital staff is a beginner at the transportation of patients, Stiegmann said, noting that it's routine to receive patients brought in from as far away as La Junta or Durango.

"The difference is, this is only six miles," he said. Oh, and 150 patients in three days, rather than just one or two a day.

"We're staggering it in such a way that we're not going to have 12 ambulances all at the same stoplight revving their engines," Stiegmann said. He estimates it will take less than a half-hour to move a patient the 6.2 miles "from bed to bed."

Just 2 1/2 hours after giving birth Monday, Macias and her baby were in a Rural Metro ambulance with a nurse and paramedics.

"I was scared," she said through an interpreter. "I had no idea we were going to move. But it went well."

In her new fifth-floor room housing Neonatal Intensive Care and Women's and Infants Services, Macias said she liked the new place more than the old. Each room has a large window, plenty of light and room for parents to spend the night.

Ed Heath, director of Women's and Infants Services, said the move of the mothers and newborns "went off like clockwork."

This week's move is the culmination of the vision to create a new campus to replace the cluttered and overcrowded campus on Colorado Boulevard.

A key piece was purchasing - for $1 from the Department of Defense - the old Fitzsimons campus, where the Fitzsimons Army Hospital once sat.

"After 14 years of planning and fussing, the faculty is delighted that this is finally coming to fruition," Stiegmann said.

Most of the doctors won't move until September, when the academic offices in Aurora will be completed.

The move

The University of Colorado Hospital at Anschutz Medical Campus was renamed from Fitzsimons last year in honor of $91 million in gifts from the Anschutz Foundation.

6.2 miles of road will be covered by semis and ambulances as the University of Colorado Hospital makes its move from east Denver to the old Fitzsimons campus in Aurora.

$644 million is slotted for the development of the new University of Colorado Hospital at Anschutz.

$7.4 million is budgeted for the move.

2.3 million man-hours will be recorded.

150 patients will be moved, along with 400 hospital beds, 6,000 medical supplies, 3,000 desks, 2,000 computers and printers, 5,200 tons of steel, 1.2 million feet of conduit and 4.6 million feet of cable.Source: University Of Colorado Hospital

scanlonb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-442-8729