WACO (April 4, 2009)--Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center’s new 236-bed hospital opened for business Saturday while an army of staffers and volunteers moved patients from Hillcrest’s Herring Avenue campus to the new state of the art facility at 100 Hillcrest Medical Blvd., near the intersection of Interstate 35 and Loop 340.

“We are indebted to our leadership Boards who, for years, tirelessly volunteered to see this day come to fruition,” said Glenn Robinson, president and CEO of Hillcrest.

“We continue a journey of sacred work, providing comfort and healing in a new breathtaking home,” he said.

The shift from old to new occurred at exactly 6 a.m. Saturday when Hillcrest closed the emergency room on the campus it has occupied for 89 years and opened the emergency room at the new hospital.

The hospital’s staff was using wheelchair-accessible vans to transfer ambulatory patients.

The rest were being moved from the old hospital to the new facility in 25 ambulances from East Texas Medical Center and others from Scott & White and Cook Children’s Healthcare System, which will help specifically with the transfer of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit patients.

Labor and delivery patients were transferred first at 6 a.m., followed by critical care, post-partum and nursery patients.

Then surgical patients, cancer patients and pediatric patients were moved.

The vans and ambulances were traveling from Herring to Pine Avenue to Hillcrest Drive to New Road and then to Bagby and Corporation Drive.

Hillcrest will continue to operate its Inpatient Rehabilitation Center outpatient cancer services at the Herring campus.