Calling it a big win for health care in Monmouth County — and an unavoidable necessity
considering the status of Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch — RWJBarnabas
Health on Friday detailed plans for a modern 252-bed acute care hospital to serve as
the anchor to the Vogel Medical Campus in Tinton Falls.
The two-building hospital will provide many of the services that Monmouth Medical
Center does today, especially elective surgery and maternity services. It will sit on a 36-
acre campus that also will feature a five-story Specialty and Cancer Care Center that
already is being built on the campus and a large medical building that will provide
outpatient and physician services.
The initiative, which Monmouth Medical Center CEO Eric Carney said has been on the
drawing board for nearly a decade, was advanced by the N.J. Department of Health late
last week — an important (but not final) step in the process.
The Department of Health notified RWJBH that the system’s certificate of need
application has been deemed complete, allowing the proposed project to move forward
to the next phase of the review and approval process. The decision signifies that all
required documentation and information for the application have been submitted and
accepted for review by the state.
While RWJBH officials applauded the announcement, the project already is receiving
strong public pushback from both Rep. Frank Pallone (D, 6th District) and Hackensack
Meridian Health, which operates two hospitals in the area.
Those objections could come up at public meetings, which will be scheduled by the
Department of Health — and need to be held before a final decision must be rendered
within 120 days (or just before Gov. Phil Murphy leaves office).
If the project gets past that stage (and the early expectations are that it will), Carney
said other approvals, planning and construction will mean the new hospital is not
expected to receive its first patient until 2032.
That timeline, Carney said, fits a study commissioned by RWJBH, which said the
existing hospital is in danger of not being able sustain operations at its current location
due to size constraints on the existing campus of a hospital that has been in that spot
for 135 years.
That’s just one of the reasons why Carney was so delighted by the news.
“It’s really about how we’re redesigning health care in Monmouth County,” he said. “It
connects a lot of the dots of some of the other centers and programs that you’ve likely
noted as you’re driving around Monmouth County.
“(We) are bringing care closer to the community we serve. That’s really what the spirit of this redesign of health care delivery is about.”
Carney pushed back on the idea that RWJBH is pulling out of Long Branch.
“The hospital is not closing,” he said.
Carney said an analysis of Monmouth Medical Center’s current patient pool shows the
new facility in Tinton Falls — which will be approximately 5 miles from Long Branch —
will increase access to care.
Carney said 72% of the current patient pull comes for one of three reasons: Surgery,
maternity or inpatient behavioral health — and that the great majority of patients using
those services are not from the immediate area.
Carney said Monmouth Medical Center attracts patients from Southern Middlesex
County to Northern Ocean County — and that patients seeing surgical or maternal
services will have an easier time reaching the new facility, which will be right off the
Garden State Parkway.
In-patient behavioral health services will remain in Long Branch. As will a satellite
emergency room, which will help serve the local public.
This fits the profile of Monmouth Medical Center, Carney said.
Carney said the number of ER visitors who require hospitalization in Long Branch is far
lower than the percentage at other RWJBH locations, saying only 18% of the current patients came to Monmouth from the ER (as opposed to approximately 75% at other
RWJBH facilities).
He also said data showed that only 8% of the Medicaid patients that it treated in the ER
came from Long Branch.
“People do not rely on us primarily for medical care through our emergency room,” he
said.
That being said, Carney said part of the plan for the new hospital is to have the ability to
quickly move patients in the ER who require hospitalization to be transported to the
Vogel Medical Campus.
“One of the commitments we’ve made in our certificate of need application is that we will
have an on-demand transportation service from Long Banch to the Vogel Medical
Campus,” he said.
“If there’s someone who needs care that’s provided at the Vogel Medical Campus, we’ll
have a Uber health model to bring them (there) free of cost.”
Carney said the bigger point is this: An architectural study commission in 2016
estimated the existing campus in Long Branch would not sustain hospital operations for
more than a decade — and was not big enough to build a modern hospital or update the
existing one.
“As we looked at, ‘How do we build a modern hospital — the modern hospital that our
community deserves — we realized that we just could not accommodate it on such a
small parcel of land,’” he said.
Carney said such a project would have taken well over a decade to complete and would
have been just as costly as building a new campus on a new plot of land. In addition,
throughout the process, the hospital would be dealing with construction that would have
curtailed services to the community, he said.
“We don’t have a footprint to just build a new patient care tower here,” he said. “So, the
decision was clear that looking for a parcel of land other than our current footprint was
the right step for us.”
Carney stressed that RWJBH is not abandoning its current location.
“Long Branch still remains a very important part of our story,” he said.
He talked off the current facility being able to offer superior behavioral health care – as
well as having more rooms available for patients that need to be held for observation
(meaning they need to be monitored but it has not been determined that they need to be
admitted.)
Carney feels the new facility will be a win-win.
“I define the Vogel Medical Campus as an expansion of Monmouth Medical Center, as I
define the creation of the Specialty and Cancer Care Center as an expansion of our
services, as I define the creation of Anne Vogel Family Wellness Center as an
expansion of our services.”
“It’s taking our core services that we already delivered to an existing community and
bringing closer to them.”
