All in the logistics: How Valley plans to move a hospital of patients to Paramus in a day

At 6 a.m. on April 14, 2024, plastic sheets will be draped over the signs directing people to The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood and its emergency room will close after 73 years in service.

At the same moment 2 miles away in Paramus, the new Valley Hospital will open its emergency room with a team of doctors, nurses and other staff members at the ready.

An hour later, a fleet of 65 ambulances will begin transporting patients from the old site in Ridgewood to Valley’s newly constructed $868 million facility. One of the features of the new facility is that every patient will get a single room.

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It will have taken two years of planning to make the move happen.

As one of the biggest and most unusual logistical challenges faced by a North Jersey hospital in recent memory, Valley plans to move an entire, fully functional medical facility into a new building without disrupting care — and most of it will done in just a few hours.

“When we first started talking about doing this move in one day, there was a lot of anxiety,” said Karteek Bhavsar, a senior vice president for Valley Health overseeing the move. “How is that possible? There is so much logistically that needs to be done.”

NorthJersey.com spoke with Valley executives in charge of the move. Here's how they're planning for the big day.

The Valley team first looked at similar one-day moves by other medical centers. They found two examples in South Jersey: Inspira Health moved patients in 2019 from a hospital in Gloucester County to a new one about 8 miles away, and Virtua Health closed its hospital in Camden County and moved everything to a new facility 5 miles away.

Get the timing right

Another key preparation was to get the timing right. Earlier this year, Valley pushed its move date from January 2024 out to April, which was met with a sigh of relief from doctors and nurses. Not only is there no need to worry about a snowstorm or ice on the roads in April, but flu, COVID, RSV and other communicable diseases will likely be winding down from their usual winter peak, so patient volume and demand for emergency services will not be as high.

“The January date that we originally had, that probably kept me up a little bit, because we know how busy we are,” said Bettyann Kempin, vice president of administration, who started her career at Valley as a nurse. “But by April, knock on wood, you’re not going to have the ERs on either campus inundated. You’re going to drop the census of the hospital, and that’s going to make the move easier.”

The move will also happen on a Sunday, when most stores are closed due to Bergen County’s blue laws. That will free up the usually traffic-snarled roads of Paramus, which has long had one of the biggest concentrations of retail space on the planet.

The start of the move will begin next month, when some of the excess supplies and equipment in Ridgewood will be sent to Paramus. But large pieces like CT scan and MRI machines will not be making the trip. Valley is turning the Ridgewood campus into a multi-pronged outpatient center where the equipment will still be needed. The new hospital in Paramus will have all new equipment.

Training at Paramus site

Also starting in January and lasting almost until moving day, hundreds of employees will be trained at the Paramus campus on everything from how to handle new medical equipment to basics such as how to get into the building and where the bathrooms are.

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The medical teams at Ridgewood will remain together when they move to Paramus, so disruption in care will be less likely once they’re familiarized with their new surroundings, Kempin said.

In mid-February, the staff will hold a “Day In The Life” test-run at Paramus to simulate caring for patients. The goal is to identify any equipment or staff concerns two months before the move. “We’re trying to plan for every scenario, and we’d rather be over-planned than under,” Bhavsar said.

If all goes smoothly in the first few months of 2024, the next flurry of activity will come in the weeks leading up to moving day.

The state Department of Health will inspect the Paramus facility about two weeks before it opens. Non-emergency surgeries will be on hold at Ridgewood beginning a week before the move. More “high-level equipment” such as robotic surgical devices will be moved closer to April 14, Bhavsar said.

About 24 hours before the move, Ridgewood will go on “critical care diversion,” which means that ambulances transporting severely ill or injured patients will be told to go to another local hospital. At midnight, Ridgewood will go on full EMS diversion, telling all ambulances to go elsewhere.

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“It doesn’t mean folks can’t still come to the ER in Ridgewood, it just means diverting a larger bulk of patients away from Ridgewood to keep the number of patients we have to move down,” Kempin said. “The ER will still be functioning on the Ridgewood campus all the way until 6 a.m., when we stop taking in new patients.”

The ER at Ridgewood closes at 6 a.m. as Paramus opens its doors for the first time, and an hour later, the migration begins.

Migrating patients in 65 ambulances

The 65 ambulances — contracted with an outside company so local ambulance squads can remain on regular duty — will move back and forth between the hospitals. The most critical patients will be moved first, with physicians on-site in Ridgewood making the call and then telling their counterparts in Paramus what to expect upon arrival. A critical care team will accompany the patient in the ambulance.

Next will come medical and surgical patients, followed by women and children. And just to make sure there are minimal snags, there will be two maintenance trucks ready in case an ambulance breaks down.

Those who are not stable enough to be moved at the time will stay at the Ridgewood campus. If a woman is in a labor “and they’re too far along, they will deliver at the Ridgewood campus,” Kempin said. “If they’re safe to move, they will be moved to the Paramus campus and deliver there.”

“We’ve seen ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and know how complicated patients might look to people out there, but everyone can move,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how critical you are. There is a way to safely transport folks. It’s just the timing that’s important, and we’re leaving that decision to the physicians and clinical team.”

If all goes well, things should be wrapped up by early afternoon and New Jersey's newest hospital will be up and running.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Here's how Valley Hospital will move everyone to new Paramus site