The Baptist Health Care Center (formerly Baptist Home) in Bismarck is moving to a new address this Friday. On December 13th the Center will be moving from its old location at 1100 E Boulevard Ave to a new location at 3400 Nebraska Drive, east of Pebble Creek Golf Course.

The administrator of the Baptist Care Center, Augie Pepple, felt that relocating their 140 residents would present a rare and useful opportunity to do a controlled test of their emergency evacuation plan. As a member of the Healthcare Preparedness Coalition, he reached out to other groups and agencies to begin planning an exercise of the emergency plan. Other healthcare groups in the region will also have an opportunity to observe the exercise and get a better idea of the planning, time, and energy involved in an actual evacuation.

Bismarck Burleigh Public Health Emergency Preparedness will be working with the Baptist Health Care Center to begin loading the ND Department of Health ambulance buses at 9 am the morning of the 13th. “This exercise is designed to bring healthcare organizations and emergency preparedness together to practice evacuating nursing home residents in the event of a flood or other disaster,” said Crystalynn Kuntz, Emergency Preparedness Coordinator. The evacuation exercise will be as realistic as possible, with an established Operations Center manned by the North Dakota Department of Health. The Operations Center will monitor the exercise by tracking all the residents electronically as they travel to their new facility. This gives the department an opportunity to test its tracking system as well.