Trinity provided a media tour Thursday and invites the public on Saturday to an 11 a.m. ribbon cutting and an open house that continues until 2 p.m.

Dr. Scott Knutson, chief of medical staff at Trinity, said the hospital move is tentatively planned for April 30, pending regulatory approvals. Trinity has arranged for about 14 ambulances, assisted by the region, to relocate an estimated 130 patients from the 100-year-old downtown hospital to the new facility in southwest Minot. Trinity urges the public to watch for an announcement of a definite move day, because at that time, the emergency room will close downtown and patients will be directed to the new emergency room.

“As we get ready to leave, there’s a lot of sentimentality about the patient stories and the years of service of those facilities. But it’s time,” Knutson said. “It’s time to grow the services that we can provide for the city and the region. It’s time to expand the capability and continue to bring state-of-the-art care to our city and our region.

“What a thrill to be in a facility that really allows us to showcase what state-of-the-art care looks like,” he added.

Dr. Scott Knutson stands Thursday in the patient discharge lounge that is a new feature in the newly constructed Trinity Hospital.

The campus includes a 200,000-square-foot medical office building that connects to the hospital on each floor. Both buildings have six floors, although only five will be in use when the facility opens. Randy Schwan, a Trinity vice president and spokesman, said the opportunity to save costs since the top floor isn’t an immediate need prompted the decision to leave the sixth floor unfinished at this time.

Physicians will be moving into the building over the next couple of weeks.

The medical office building will be home to outpatient kidney dialysis, an outpatient pharmacy, a durable medical equipment outlet and will house 18 specialties and about 60 physicians.

“We actually have a number of new providers who will be coming here shortly after we open,” said Thomas Warsocki, vice president of Physician Services.

Physicians who will move to the new office building will be specialists who require frequent hospital visits, such as surgeons, cardiologists and obstetricians. The office building will have a multi-station, central check-in point for patients coming to see any of the doctors.

Danya Brown, nurse manager for the Family Birth Center, left, and Kathy Schaefer, director of Women’s and Children’s Service, show off a neonatal intensive care room capable of accommodating triplets during a tour Thursday.

The campus also includes a 600,000-square-foot hospital with 147 beds, which is fewer than the existing hospital. All rooms will be private.

The new hospital features a patient discharge lounge, where patients can leave in a more private environment and their rides can pull up to the heated lounge exit.

Other hospital features include a coffee shop managed by The Station, a cafeteria, chapel and a conference center, with a series of rooms that can be used for community education, staff training or as an incident command center. For patient safety, the buildings have more than 900 hand sanitizer stations and 299 cameras throughout.

The campus has 1,376 above-ground parking spots and 213 underground parking spaces. The grounds have been planted with more than 500 different trees and flowers, and future plans call for an outdoor brick patio outside the chapel and a park and walking trail.

Within the hospital, the operating suite has 12 operating rooms, with two available for future growth. The post-anesthesia care unit has 23 bays – 10 more than Trinity Hospital and its St. Joseph’s building combined. The same day surgery center is co-located with the unit and has 44 private patient rooms.

Photos by Minot’s Hint of Whimsy photography studio line the hallways throughout the birthing unit at the new Trinity Hospital.

The gastro-intestinal suite has six procedure rooms, versus four at Trinity Health Medical Arts.

Physician consultation rooms in the operating room area allow for family privacy.

The Emergency Trauma Center (ETC) will have 24 exams rooms, four triage rooms, four trauma rooms and a room specially designed for interviews and examinations with sexual assault victims. Barricade-proof doors and roll-down grates over medical gas outlets serve as patient safety measures in behavioral health rooms in the ETC.

For faster emergency response, the ETC is co-located with radiology, and the helicopter pad is connected via a hallway. Ambulances will be able to pull up a ramp and into an ambulance bay large enough to hold four vehicles comfortably.

The family birthing center includes 12 labor and delivery rooms, all adjacent to the C-section operating rooms and neonatal intensive care unit. The NICU rooms all are private and include rooms specifically designed to accommodate twins and triplets. In birthing and children’s service areas, rooms have a couch that pulls out into a bed for a family member.

Patients will find accommodations much more spacious, with a focus on natural lighting and design features that reduce risk of falls and infections.

Trinity staff participating in Thursday’s tour cited a number of efficiencies associated with the new hospital design, many of them associated with the layout of the facility.

Knutson said Trinity staff spent nearly six years in planning the design of the new facility and now are working to ensure a smooth transition.

“They are making sure every nook and cranny is ready for patient care to start in just a few weeks,” he said. “They’re doing this in addition to their current work.”

Looking forward, he said, the real excitement is what this means to the future of healthcare in the city and in the region. Trinity sees the new facility as a recruitment tool in growing its medical staff as well as a necessity in meeting the needs of today’s healthcare.

Knutson said Trinity daily provides about 10,000 patient care visits, more than 100 emergency room visits and 50 surgeries.

“You build for your needs today. You build a space that you can expand tomorrow,” Knutson said, noting space exists on Trinity’s property for a second medical office building someday.

“We’re also trying to capture the idea that there will be less inpatient work in the future as more and more services move to outpatient care. So that general trend is something that we’re trying to recognize,” he said, adding that flexibility in how beds are designated for care also is important. “What we’ve done on the floors allows us to utilize that space in a more efficient manner – actually flex some of those beds.”

The new facility will provide more space, more patient privacy and better service delivery, according to Trinity staff. From a play therapy room in the pediatrics area to a family room in the NICU that allows parents to practice caring for their infants at home, the medical center offers opportunities with its modern design.

“I’m excited for what we’re going to do, and what we’ll be able to do to support our community for a long time,” said Karen Zimmerman, chief nursing officer and vice president of Patient Care.