The senior vice-president of Sudbury Regional Hospital said he’s “feeling very confident” that the transfer of hundreds of patients from the Memorial and St. Joseph’s hospital sites over the next couple of months will be without incident.

“We have a good plan, we’ve worked hard on that plan for two years, and we’ve got great support from our staff.

They’re excited about the move, and they want to help,” said Joe Pilon, who spoke to Northern Life about the issue Jan. 12 after the hospital’s board of directors meeting.

Pilon said about 100 patients will be transferred from the Memorial site to the one-site hospital, located at Laurentian hospital, on Jan. 31.

After that, about 130 alternate level of care (ALC) patients will be transferred to the Memorial site in mid-February.

The Memorial site will receive minor renovations to cater to ALC patients. The province is paying to care for these patients at the Memorial site for one year.

About 250 patients from the St. Joseph’s site will be transferred to the one-site hospital at the end of March.

Pilon said the hospital has received advice on co-ordinating all of these transfers from a private consulting firm called Health Care Relocations, which has expertise in relocating patients.

The budget for hiring the consulting company is included in the capital project budget.

Health Care Relocations suggested the hospital create five different teams out of its own staff members to assist in the patient relocations. These teams, which will have different duties, will wear different coloured t-shirts.

For example, there will be a lift team to assist patients from stretchers and wheelchairs, a transport team to porter the patients via stretchers or wheelchairs and a registered nurse transfer team to accompany patients from their existing bed to a new bed.

“(Health Care Relocations) have a proven system that minimizes the risk to patients and maximizes safe patient transports,” Pilon said.

Depending upon how ill the patient is, they will be transported either by ambulance or a transfer service.

It’s been a long road for hospital officials to get to this point.

The first phase of the hospital construction, which took place during the late 1990s and early 2000s, faced massive cost overruns, and ended up costing $137 million.

The latest phase of the project, which has a cost of $125 million, began in March 2007.

The contractor, EllisDon, completed this phase of the project a little more than a month ahead of schedule, at the end of October 2009, and has been putting the finishing touches on the building.

“We’re looking at things like some doors may open the wrong direction, and we may have to move some plug-ins, or change some lighting,” Pilon said. “We’re making sure the rooms are cool enough or hot enough. We’re doing all of those little finishing details now that the major construction is done.

“Because the winter came, there was some landscaping we didn’t get to do and paving we didn’t get to do. We want to take down some of the temporary entrances, like the South Entrance, but the winter kind of beat us. We’ll get to that in the spring.”

The Jan. 12 Sudbury Regional Hospital board of directors meeting was also the first one attended by new hospital CEO Dr. Denis Roy.

Roy said he is looking forward to meeting major challenges at the hospital head-on, including the patient relocations, solving the problems involving ALC patients, improving wait times in the emergency department and decreasing the hospital’s deficit.

He said he also looks forward to increasing the academic role of the hospital.

2010 will be a good year for the hospital, Roy said.

“When it’s time to visit the hospital, you should visit it,” he said.

“You will see technology in this hospital that you will not see elsewhere.

“Simply from the point of view of the building, but especially the technology, it’s going to be a good year. Patient care will be improved. It was very good already, but it will be made easier because of that technology. It will allow us to become a university health centre.”