Adelaide's North Terrace will be an ambulance highway transporting more than 300 patients over three days as the city's old Royal Adelaide Hospital closes and its new namesake opens.
The ceremonial opening for the new hospital will be staged on Sunday with the great move starting on Monday.
It will be a major logistical exercise that will test the ambulance service and health workers on both sites.
And to make the shift even more frantic, the old RAH's emergency department will close on Tuesday at 7am, with anyone arriving after being re-directed to the $2.4 billion facility up the road.
First to hop into the ambulances for the short journey will be the cancer patients and the oncology services.
Most patients in the intensive care, medical and surgical units will be gradually moved over the three days, depending on how busy and sick the patients in the units are.
Staff at the hospital have been preparing for the move by reducing the number of overnight patients at the old facility by almost half.
To achieve this, non-urgent multi-day elective surgery was temporarily put on hold at other Adelaide hospitals to free up space.
In the 10 days leading up to the move, the reduction in numbers has been ramped up by shifting emergency cases to other metropolitan sites to complete their recovery.
The new hospital will have 800 beds compared to the 680 at the current RAH and will care for an estimated 85,000 inpatients and 400,000 outpatients each year.
It will be the largest hospital in SA, spanning the equivalent of three city blocks on a 10-hectare site.
The development has been plagued by cost blowouts, delays and a protracted legal stoush over problems with the new facility.
But the state government maintains it will be the best hospital in Australia, one of the best in the world and will usher in a new era of patient care.
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