SSM Health St. Mary’s prepares for opening

A new, multi-million dollar hospital is just days away from opening. SSM Health St. Mary’s in Jefferson City is set to open it’s doors Sunday, but before it does, officials said they want future patients to know a few things, like which location you’ll go to if you need to head to the ER.

Out with the old and in with the new. In just a few days, staff, doctors, patients and nurses will be out of the old St. Mary’s and into this new state of the art hospital off Miller Road.

“We have a dedicated route for patients that we’re going to take, we’re also extra staffed that day to handle and make it an extra smooth process for our patients,” said Marketing and Communications Consultant Becki Collier.

The $218 million SSM Health St. Mary’s facility will feature all private rooms and a labor and delivery unit featuring all-inclusive mom and baby suites.

The emergency department will feature bedside registration, meaning less time in the waiting room. Over the last few months crews have been preparing for the big switch.

Collier said, “We’ve worked with all the area EMS services, so we’ve got 16 ambulances that are coming that are equipped to handle the patients that we’re moving, we’ve also got a couple for specialty ambulances that are coming for our more ICU type patients, higher risk type patients.”

Officials said they’ve practiced for the actual transition on Sunday. “We have participated in two mock moves, one was September 15th and then we came back together and said okay what went right, what went wrong, what can we fix, what still needs to be tweaked. We came back together on October 19th and did more of a full mock drill with ambulances and mock patients and we again, came back together, tweaked a few more things and we’re ready,” said Collier.

Officials said the first surgery at the new location is scheduled for Monday morning.