Reason #5: You’ll Streamline Communication
The Top 6 Reasons Your Hospital or Clinical Care Unit Needs a Move Manager
This is the fifth of a six-part series on how having an external expert as your partner can make the entire process of moving or renovating your clinical space easier from start to finish. As you’ll learn, a move manger is not a moving company -it’s much, much more.
In this series, we’ll discuss some of the common issues and considerations a hospital or clinical care unit experience when transitioning to a new space. Even a small one. From managing details, stakeholders, and construction time, to communication and to minimizing stress, this series offers informative suggestions to make your hospital or health care unit move a smooth and successful transition.
I’m back with our series about why it benefits you to hire a move manager when you’re about to renovate or relocate a clinical care unit. And this time, my focus is on communication. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “I think what we have here is a failure to communicate.” So, as you can imagine, communication at all levels is essential, before and during a move, internally among your staff and externally, among patients and their families.
That’s because confusion equals delays—which means it’s critical for everyone involved to understand what’s happening and when your project will affect them.
At Vargas Associates, we’ve developed proven methods and tools during relocation projects to streamline communications when we partner with a client. Our team will advise your leadership and staff on key communications that will be needed, based on your move’s timeframe. Then we’ll develop a detailed plan to keep internal and external stakeholders informed about critical deadlines, with updates about when and how they need to prepare for the move.
Your internal project manager is a critical player in your move, and this person will be the move manager’s direct line of contact. We partner with your internal project manager and coordinate the lines of communication between administration, clinical staff, as well as the entire project team. As you may remember from one of my earlier posts, some of what we do for our clinical clients is to “translate” needs between your internal staff and your external contractors and suppliers, because each has a different schedule, uses their own acronyms, and has slightly different priorities. Naturally, the people on your staff who are providing patient care are most concerned about their patients’ needs. Working with nurse managers and administrators, we gather and organize information critical to the move, including scheduling needs that allow for continuity of patient care.
Speaking of time, you may be wondering how far ahead a move for a clinical care space needs to start planning. Based on my experience, large projects can often take up to a year’s worth of planning, plan 6 months for a medium sized and 3 months for a small size move. If your move manager is new to you, add a month for time to get them established as a supplier. While the move itself takes place in a very short window of time, so much of the work takes place well ahead of it.
As the move approaches, end-users of each department are provided with detailed move communications that allow them to follow a systematic and time-tested process to pack and label all furniture, equipment (including computers), files and other belongings ahead of moving day. Everyone is kept informed so they can be prepared.
For patients, the actual move happens quickly, over the span of one days. But there’s lots of preparation beforehand, we organize and recommend right-sizing staffing of clinical and non-clinical resources, and then track each and every step needed. Everything is specified ahead of time, and that streamlines every aspect of the move.
But are moves still stressful? Of course, they are, which is a major reason to hire a move manager! Next time I’ll write about how a move manager provides calm and reassurance to reduce everyone’s stress. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you’ll come back here again soon for reason #6 to hire a move manager. If you have any comments or questions, be sure to get in touch with us.
