UPHS Marquette on its way to being open

MARQUETTE — UPHS Marquette is making its way to finally being open to the public. Although the final challenge that is in front of them is the relocation of its operations and the patients from the West College Avenue location to the new hospital on West Baraga Avenue.

The move is estimated to have over 120 patients that will be relocated to the new hospital over the course of eight hours. For this to be possible the City of Marquette will be closing off some roads to help with this effort. These roads will include West College Avenue to Seventh St. then progressing to West Baraga Avenue.

So UPHS and the City ask for the public to avoid these roads from 6 a.m. until completion.

“So what we are asking from the community is to avoid those areas,” explained Mary Armijo, Associated Administrator at UPHS. “This is because we will be having a continuing flow of ambulances leaving the existing hospital and coming to the new hospital to drop off patients. So we want to minimize any type of traffic impact to that area.”

After the move is complete members of the community will be able to come see their family that may be patients at the hospital.

“So there is a big communication plan that has been put together,” said Armijo. “We will have a reception here at the new hospital to welcome our patient’s family members and re-unite them with their families after they have been moved into their room.”

Now once the move has officially been completed the next step will be transitioning all of the emergency calls will be taken from the new hospital. This change will be official by June 2nd.

“We have communicated out that all of our outlying facilities need to transition all their new patients to the new facility on June 2nd at 6 a.m.,” said Mike Phillips, Clinical Director of Emergency Department at UPHS. “This is important so that we will be ready to accept all of the new patients as well as treat them appropriately.”

The hospital would also like to remind everyone that they have had a lot of time to plan and make precautions for the move itself.

“I would like to assure everyone that we will have a safe transition,” said Wael Khouli, Chief Medical Officer at UPHS. “We have done all of our preparations to make sure moving the patients from the old hospital to the new hospital is safe. The care is quality perfect care and at the same time we have arrangements to respond to medical emergencies on both sides.”

UPHS will be making their transition on Sunday at 6 a.m. where they will be taking high critical patients and other patients to the new hospital from the old one.