Migration team moves to Mater Dei this week

The first group of hospital employees will move from St Luke's Hospital to Mater Dei Hospital this week as preparations for the migration of services and facilities intensify.

The 10-strong migration planning team is made up of a migration project manager and nine migration facilitators, Mater Dei spokesman Chris Scicluna said.

The team's migration comes on the heels of a two-week intensive programme for more than 300 staff members on the use of new systems and equipment at the new hospital as part of a "train the trainer" programme which ended on Friday. Training for the rest of the staff will start in the coming days.

Migration project manager Mario Hili said it was essential for the planning team to operate on site. This, he said, provided better access for them to offer the necessary support to heads of departments during the process of transferring ready tested and commissioned areas to the end users.

The testing and commissioning process is under way in a number of areas and departments at Mater Dei to ensure full functionality of systems and equipment and adherence of the actual delivery to the criteria requested. Mr Hili explained that the hospital departments are transferred to the heads of department only at the end of this testing process.

"Patient safety is of utmost importance and the migration sequence places this factor as its topmost priority. Heads of departments must be fully satisfied with the functionality of all systems and equipment in their areas of responsibility before their respective department is handed over for use," he said.

Among their functions during the migration planning phase, the migration facilitators collected information from the 57 departments or sections at St Luke's on a number of vital issues related to the relocation of services. This information was then channelled to the migration project manager to draw up a migration sequence.

This process, which has been ongoing for more than a year, included a number of meetings with the clinical, nursing and paramedic heads of each section to identify the best and least disruptive sequence for the migration process. The process identified those services that every department depends upon so that they were in place at Mater Dei prior to migration. It also established the impact that every department has on other hospital sectors.

The transfer of the first staff members follows a number of preparations that took place in the last days, including the first physical transfer of facilities when 150 internal telephone extensions used at St Luke's Hospital were redirected to the new telephone numbering scheme last week. Batches of 150 lines will be redirected every two weeks until all the 1,200 lines have been redirected to the new scheme to be used at Mater Dei.