Over the course of a weekend, approximately 350 patients are transferred to the new building as the facility continues to operate. It’s a matter of human lives, you can’t make a mistake there. Project manager Julia Zimmer makes sure everything runs smoothly.
Julia Zimmer is relaxed. “Again,” she laughs. But her family already knows that they will have to do without her more often from next summer. Then the warm phase begins. In autumn 2023, the Helios Horst-Schmidt-Kliniken (HSK) will move into the new clinic building next door for a weekend while business continues. Julia Zimmer coordinates the move.
The task is very complex. Every detail must be considered. From the moment the first patient is pushed into the new building, everything must go smoothly. It concerns people’s health and, in an emergency, their life. There is no time for subsequent corrections. For about a year and a half, the project manager has been preparing the move together with a small team comprising employees from different departments. There is no blueprint for this. Although several clinics have recently moved to new buildings within the Helios Group, the conditions are not comparable, says Julia Zimmer.
That’s why there are separate plans for the HSK Wiesbaden with around 950 beds. The transfer is therefore divided into three phases. Approximately two months before patients are moved to the new clinic, staff begin training and education. Work processes or the operation of new technical devices must be trained. The new house will have a pneumatic tube system that can be used, among other things, to transport blood or tissue samples in a time-saving way. There was no such thing in the old HSK. Many medical devices are newly purchased and put into operation in the new building. The routes in the departments will also change, because the move is accompanied by a restructuring. Due to the merger of the specialist wards, the wards will be larger in future and will have an average of 80 beds.
But construction workers are still scurrying through the long corridors. Where walls and ceilings are open, visitors to the construction site get an impression of the building’s sophisticated technical equipment. Countless cables and lines are installed. And everything must work perfectly. The technical systems will be checked and approved in the coming months.
The health department is involved, the fire brigade or the TÜV. Some parts of the building are almost finished, the delivery rooms have already been painted in light and friendly colours. Cabinets are set up in some patient rooms. Elsewhere, medical equipment is already protruding from the ceiling. According to the Helios healthcare group, the new HSK will be one of the largest and most modern clinics in Hesse. The seven-story building, 200 meters long and approximately 100 meters wide and with a floor space of approximately 98,000 square meters, will have a total of 3,410 patient, office and technology rooms and will offer space for nearly 1,000 beds.
The new clinic
The clinics of Dr. Horst Schmidt (HSK) are named after the former Hessian Minister of Social Affairs, Horst Schmidt.
The old building it was built between 1976 and 1982. It will be demolished after the move to the new building.
This new building has existed since 2016 on the Wiesbaden Freudenberg in the immediate vicinity of the old building. The Helios Group bought the former municipal hospital from Rhön-Klinikum AG in 2014. The city of Wiesbaden holds 51% of the shares of HSK.
To the new building It is a seven-story building with four wings and a gross floor area of 98,000 m2.
28 specialized clinics it will be housed in the new HSK building after completion.
The new Palace it will have 22 operating theatres, six delivery rooms, one cesarean operating theatre, two intensive care units with 72 beds, several cardiac catheter measurement stations and four three-story bed blocks with approximately 950 beds.
A total of 3410 rooms are housed in the new building. Approximately 1500 PC workstations are set up.
Technology is demanding. Approximately 900 kilometers of electricity cables and 850 kilometers of data cables will be laid.
The construction costs amount to about 268 million euros, according to Helios. Helios is investing around 200 million euros. The state of Hesse is financing the construction of a new clinic in Wiesbaden with 68 million. Recently, it was speculated that the construction costs would increase to around 300 million euros. you
The increasingly stringent frequency of meetings testifies to the approaching date of the move. Julia Zimmer’s team of eight now meets weekly. Contact persons are appointed in all areas of the clinic. The construction site is progressing. “Things are looking good at the moment,” she says. Due to the corona crisis and bottlenecks in the supply of materials, the originally planned relocation for 2020 had been postponed.
Before patients are moved into the new building in a third phase, the offices and clinics will be relocated. This takes three to four weeks. Patients are then moved over the weekend.
For this there will be two particularly well paved and weather-protected transport routes – a main route and an emergency route which can be traveled in parallel – through which patients will be pushed into the new building in their beds. The plan is to move the patients to the intensive care unit first. Each of these seriously ill patients is accompanied by a doctor, a nurse and a person from the logistics department. “We want the highest possible level of security.” This requirement applies to every stage of the move and to every area. Finally, the central emergency room will move.
To ensure that there are not too many people in the clinic over the moving weekend, planned operations are rescheduled and operating room capacities are reduced shortly beforehand. Christmas is a good starting point for this, says Julia Zimmer. A similar procedure is done before the holidays. So there are only about 300-350 patients in the clinic. This dimension is the target for movement.
Some more recent buildings remain, including the Institute of Pathology and Cytology or the Clinic of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. The old HSK building will later be demolished and the area turned into a park.
