Things to Consider Before Moving Your Healthcare Facility

Moving your healthcare facility, also known as healthcare transition, requires the right partner, strategy and plan in place in order for everything to go as seamlessly as possible. Going into the process, know that there can never be enough planning when it comes to moving a medical facility, and success is a moving target the entire time.

Build the right transition team

If you’re a healthcare professional or are working on a healthcare move or relocation, it’s key to get your vendor partner involved in the process as early as possible, often as far out as 12-18 months from the move.

There are movers, there are commercial movers and then there are experienced healthcare transition professionals, such as Armstrong Commercial Services. You want to make sure that you’re working with someone who has extensive healthcare moving experience because it requires a very unique skill set. It’s important to properly vet your provider or partner, and it will be apparent fairly quickly if you’re dealing with an inexperienced vendor.

You’ll also want to involve equipment planners, medical technicians, healthcare equipment manufacturers and other stakeholders as soon as possible. Build a team who can collaborate and work well together through the tedious process.

Understand the three moves within the main move

There are three sub-moves within a main move. First, there is the new equipment move. You’ve likely purchased new equipment for your facility, and you want to make sure it’s installed prior to the move. Once the equipment is en route, there’s no stopping the truck for any construction delays (which happen more often than not).

The best plan to create efficiencies is to have the new equipment shipped, received and stored at your healthcare transition vendor’s warehouse. A healthcare transition partner will kit like items together, store the equipment, assemble the equipment and deliver those items out as needed. When equipment is coming directly from the manufacturer, you don’t have any flexibility on timing and cannot control the initial transportation.

Next, you need to plan for moving items from the previous facility that you will be reusing. While much of your equipment may be new, you will, in most cases, be reusing some items from the old facility. Everything will need to be tagged and staged for moving so that it will arrive on time.

Lastly, you need to plan to move all of the items from the previous facility that you no longer need. Furniture, cubicles, equipment and all other items will need to be out of the old building. Plus, you may have a building owner who is anxious to have the facility emptied.

Planning for these three moves is critical to the overall success of the transition.

Prepare for the challenges

When you’re dealing with a medical facility move, there are many moving pieces. And with patients needing treatment, lives are literally on the line.

Think through things such as a pharmacy move. Likely, the pharmacy will need to close for a short window while your healthcare transition partner packs, labels and then moves the product under strict security to the new facility. All of this is planned during the pre-move phase.

While many things in healthcare have been digitized, there are still a number of files and papers in a facility. You will need to work with your healthcare transition partner to coordinate, load and move sensitive files and information.

Remember your IT equipment and servers that will need to be moved. Armstrong works with your IT team to disconnect, reconnect, set up, test and get the servers back up and running quickly and efficiently. Servers are moved on special trucks with their own crew and multiple supervisors. We understand that IT moves are some of the most sensitive that healthcare facilities will encounter, and we handle them with the upmost care.

Whether you’re a small clinic moving down the street or a large hospital looking to move across the country, Armstrong Commercial Services has an experienced team who can help you make the process go as smoothly as possible. Contact us today to learn more.