Denison, TX--For months the corner of Highway 75 and F.M. 691 has been a construction zone, but now the hard hats are coming off and the new TMC is starting to look like a hospital and on December 27th it will officially be a hospital. Staff and volunteers will move all of the patients from the old TMC to the new. Planning the process has been in the works for more than a year.

"If you think about it too hard you get overwhelmed so you just stack your paper up on the middle of your desk and start taking the first piece of paper that comes along,” said Randy Truxal, Associate Administrator for TMC.

Truxal is one of many overseeing the process of moving patients and equipment to the new TMC.

"We literally have to have two functioning hospitals for approximately six hours," said Truxal.

On moving day ambulances from departments in the surrounding area will transfer all patients. Truxal said the hospital has been planning the process and even watched a hospital in Waco as they completed a move on the same scale to ensure patient safety as many may be on ventilators or facing life threatening situations.

"Our teams have worked very hard on reading case studies and talking to other hospitals that have actually moved,” said Truxal.

But it's not only patients that will have to be moved, the hospital will spend weeks after moving day transferring equipment and supplies. Today trainers from an outside company were instructing staff and volunteers on how the process will work.

And as for the cost of all of this Truxal doesn't have an exact number, but knows it's not going to be cheap.

"Exactly what it's going to cost to move is an astronomical number. Because we have the man power that we will have at old TMC getting the patient ready to transition and then we have the man power at the new TMC that is going to receive them,” said Truxal.
Truxal said the cost for the move was included in the 96 million dollar budget for the new hospital and that it will not affect the cost of patient care at TMC.