Triumph Hospital Patients Settle in New Location on Wallace Boulevard
By David Pittman, Amarillo Globe-News, Texas
Dec. 27–Imagine transferring 27 patients across town in six hours.
Almost all of the patients have some serious medical ailment. They’re on oxygen, ventilators or carry an infection.
That was the task before workers at Triumph Hospital.
Triumph has moved to its new location at 7501 Wallace Blvd. It is leaving its old hospital at 2828 S.W. 27th Ave. after leasing the Wallace building.
The building was finished this summer for High Plains Hospital, a pain management, physical rehabilitation and psychiatric care hospital. High Plains had trouble getting its operation off the ground.
Triumph had less than a month to coordinate a move — equipment, medical records, patients and all.
“We had absolutely no snags,” said Michael Davis, chief clinical officer for the National Region of the hospital’s parent company, Houston-based Triumph Healthcare. “We successfully moved 27 patients and had three admissions right after that.”
Triumph specializes in long-term stay patients. The average length of stay for its patients is 25 days compared to five to seven for general hospitals.
The day of moving patients, Dec. 18, started around 7 a.m. when all patients were fed breakfast.
Three teams — a full staff at each location and a third transport team — helped ensure patient safety during the day.
The hospital worked with ambulance services to move patients during the day.
Chief Clinical Officer Jennifer Carthel assessed all patients to determine their conditions for the best form of movement.
Everything at the new hospital was set up for the patients there, interim Chief Executive Joy Dier said. But everything at the old hospital had to be in place for patients there as well.
Administrators oriented nearly 140 full-time and 40 part-time employees to the hospital in three days.
Hospital workers also spent the better part of a day earlier in the week personally moving patient medical and financial records.
“The idea was to ensure the integrity of the medical records and financial information,” Ancillary Services Director David Sledge said.
Such a move is rare in Amarillo.
Northwest Texas Hospital moved from Seventh Avenue to Coulter Street in 1982. St. Anthony’s Hospital moved to Wallace Boulevard when it merged with High Plains Baptist in 1996.
Administrators at the Houston-based Triumph Healthcare were forced to scramble for Houston and New Orleans hospitals when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck.
“This is a luxury, to plan this out and systematically plan where patients go,” Davis said.
Triumph will spend the next several months renovating its space to add a seven-bed intensive-care unit and diagnostic space. The hospital also needs to create patient rooms conducive to its long-term stay patients.
The Wallace Boulevard hospital will give Triumph more room for patients — 79 beds when renovations are finished. Triumph had 63 beds before.
The hospital looked at moving to a new hospital for more than a year.
“This is the culmination of a lot of anticipation from the staff,” Sledge said.
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