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Sutter Hospital Planning To Move Everything, Including Patients, In 24 Hours

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Sutter Memorial Hospital is going to relocate everything to a new facility, including its patients, in just 24 hours.

The Anderson Lucchetti Women's and Children's Center is set to open on Aug. 8, but that's just the beginning. On Saturday at midnight, a fleet of ambulances will shuttle three patients at a time from Sutter Memorial Hospital in East Sacramento to its new facility in Midtown.

"There are almost seven significant steps in there and there will be a communications and command center in place that will track where every patient is throughout the whole process," said Rick Harrell.

Along with its 200 patients being packed up are equipment, food and medicine making the two-mile trek, all following carefully labelled and color-coded arrows from Point A to Point B.

But what about if a woman goes into labor?

"We wouldn't interrupt someone and say, 'Just hold on to that baby,'" he said. "We wouldn't do that at all. We're able to take care of them. And if it takes longer than our scheduled time, it's fine."

While many patients will be new or expectant mothers, one challenge will be moving babies in the neonatal intensive care unit.

"We actually transfer babies all of the time. We will just systematically transfer about 40 of them in the middle of the night," he said.

It's a delicate job where preparation meets execution .

Hospital staff say if everything goes according to plan, the hope is that they will be completely out of the old facility by 7 p.m. on Saturday.

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