What Does It Take to Move an Entire Hospital in 1 Day? Intermountain Health Is About to Find Out

Intermountain Health is about two weeks away from moving its hospital in the Denver suburb of Wheat Ridge, Colorado —  including an estimated 180 patients —  about three and a half miles down the road to a new and updated facility. Ambitiously, the health system is planning to pull off the move all in one day.

The current campus — called Intermountain Health Lutheran Medical Center — was founded in 1905 as a tuberculosis sanitarium, said Andrea Burch, the hospital’s president. 

For decades, the campus consisted of “little tuberculosis huts” until 1960, when the first hospital wing was established, she explained. About a decade later, the main inpatient toward was built, which is still the central point of the hospital today, Burch stated.

“The layout and the whole functionality of that tower is a problem,” she declared. “First of all, it’s built using three feet-thick concrete walls because that’s how you built hospitals years ago. But WiFi actually doesn’t travel through that thick of concrete, and so we have technical challenges in the current space.”

The current facility also experiences water and plumbing malfunctions quite often — Burch said that “some sort of leak or water pipe burst” has been happening almost weekly for years. Other structural problems include HVAC challenges and asbestos under some of the flooring, she added.

Burch said that Intermountain has known for about 10 years that this facility needs a massive renovation. Since it’s nearly impossible to renovate the hospital’s thick concrete walls, Intermountain chose to buy a plot of land and start from a blank slate.

“It gave us an opportunity to start over and build the hospital from scratch — and truly build a state-of-the-art hospital that is truly equipped to handle and support the technology that we have available today and in the future,” Burch remarked.

In addition to being better designed for tech integrations, the new location — which is being renamed Lutheran Hospital — will also be more accessible for ambulances and patients seeking emergency care. The new location is located right near an interstate junction, whereas the current one is in the middle of a neighborhood, Burch noted.

The new facility will also have a helicopter pad on top of the building so patients can have swift access to the elevator leading to the trauma department, she added. At the older location, helicopters have to land on the campus’ kickball field.

Additionally, Burch pointed out that the new hospital will have a much more cohesive floor design than the current location. The current facility consists of wings that were added on gradually over the course of decades, but the new hospital has consolidated departments. This means departments that frequently collaborate with one another won’t be spread across multiple corners of the campus.

Planning for the one-day move — which is slated for August 3 — has been in the works for about two years, Burch said. To pull it off, Intermountain will use 20-22 ambulances to move the hospital’s patients, she explained.

“We’ll be moving a patient about every four to six minutes from the current building over to the new building,” Burch said.

In her view, one of the most exciting things about the new hospital is that it is built for “the pandemic of the future.”

This includes separate air filtration areas to create an isolated “hospital within a hospital,” as well as multiple redundancy systems to support functionality in emergency scenarios. The hospital will also be designed to better support staff members in the case of an outbreak — by not placing curtains around beds, having blinds contained within windows, using passthrough cabinets to minimize entry into rooms, and larger hallways that allow for ease of movement at a safe distance.

The project is estimated to cost $680 million, which is under its $710 million budget, Burch said.

Photo credit: Mironov Konstantin, Getty Images