Their own words: Monmouth Medical Center officials on benefits of hospital at Vogel Medical Campus

Here are two things you need to know about the state-of-the-art rooms that RWJBarnabas Health is envisioning for their proposed acute care hospital to anchor the Vogel Medical Campus in Tinton Falls.

Big picture: All the rooms will be able to convert to ICU-quality — a plus not just for a future pandemic but for when a patient’s condition requires higher level of care;

Little picture: Every aspect of the room — where does the hand sanitizer go? — will be part of detailed discussions among doctors and nurses and hospital personnel.

To be clear, the new hospital figures to be at least six years off. But after receiving a key approval from the state last week, the talk of what could be coming already is only increasing.

So said Ann Szapor, the chief nursing officer at Monmouth Medical Center.

“I’m excited to tell you that our staff will also be included in the design and planning of the building, which they are really thrilled about,” she said. “There’s rarely a day that goes by that we don’t round with our staff and hear, ‘What’s going on with our new hospital? What’s happening?’

“We get lots of questions and lots of excitement around that. They are fully engaged in the process and really looking forward to it.”

Szapor was speaking at a media briefing last Friday on the proposed hospital. She was joined by Monmouth Medical Center CEO Eric Carney (who led the discussion and offered the majority of the comments), Board of Trustees Chair Mary Anne Nagy and Dr. Vin Prabhat, the president of the medical staff.

Using comments during the media briefing — as well as private conversations after the fact – BINJE has created a Q&A format to express the thoughts of the leaders. The answers have been slightly edited for clarity and grammar.

BINJE: Let’s start with the room design. It’s easy to say it will be state-of-the-art. What does that mean — and how do you get everyone involved?

CARNEY: Our staff, as well as members of our community, whether it’s our board members or our patient family advisory council, are part of the design of the decision-making for the entire campus.

We’re going to build mock rooms (which will come after input), and then staff will have the opportunity to come in and experience the space as they will work in it. Very simple things like, ‘Where’s the hand sanitizer go? Where does the box of gloves go? Where’s the monitor that I have to document?’

We’ll get feedback from them and then incorporate those ideas further into our design.

BINJE: Talk about making every room an ICU room?

CARNEY: This is going to be built using what’s called the Universal Room concept. Every room will be built to meet ICU standards. During COVID, our challenge wasn’t that we didn’t have enough rooms. Our challenge was that we didn’t have enough ICU rooms. This platform will allow us to configure every room to be an ICU.

With this concept, the ICU is not a location, it’s a patient status. So, if you come to our hospital and you’re admitted, and you go up to the floor and something happens and you now need ICU level of care, we can provide you that care in your same room. We bring the ICU to you.

BINJE: How else did the pandemic impact design?

CARNEY: There are a lot of infection control things that we’ve learned through the pandemic that will be incorporated into it, like being able to segment towers from an HVAC standpoint, so we can maintain separate clean and contaminated towers, the way we structure our waiting rooms, and particularly the emergency room, to make sure there’s essentially an infectious and non-infectious side. All those elements will be incorporated into the design.

BINJE: How will the new hospital impact care?

PRABHAT: Speaking on behalf of nearly 1,000 physicians, I can tell you that while we deliver the gold standard of care here, there are challenges given the footprint that we have and the size of the operating rooms. I think going to the Vogel Medical Campus is going to be a game changer for us. Building the hospital from the ground up, taking into consideration all the new technologies, is so exciting.

BINJE: Anything else?

PRABHAT: Access. One of the limitations of our current campus is that we’re 15-20 minutes from the Parkway. By having a state-of-the-art medical facility offering acute care that’s 30 seconds off the Parkway, we’re going to be able to really take care of our population. Timeliness is so important.

CARNEY: We wished we knew the number of moms who delivered on the Garden State Parkway, trying to get to us. We don’t keep it, but it would be very powerful.

And we have centers of excellence around orthopedic surgery, thoracic surgery, GI surgery, as well as pediatric surgery. Patients come throughout our county to access these services, so placing them closer to the parkway makes sense.

BINJE: One more thought on maternity care. Many hospitals around the country are phasing out such services (astonishingly enough). You’re all in. Detail the importance of those services?

CARNEY: It’s one of our core services. We deliver about 6,500 babies every year, which makes us one of the largest labor-and-delivery programs in the state. We specialize in high-risk deliveries. This building is being built to accommodate 7,000 deliveries.

BINJE: All of this is great for patients – but it’s also a plus for employees. Talk about how a state-of-the-art facility impacts attraction and retention?

CARNEY: Our culture is such that our employees value working here. We measure employee engagement on an annual basis. And last year, Monmouth Medical Center rated at the 83rd percentile nationally for the overall level of engagement and satisfaction of our employees. In a time in our industry where overall engagement by health care workers is going down, Monmouth Medical Center continues to find new ways to engage with our employees. We’ve been very blessed.

BINJE: What about the employees from the local community, will they be forced to relocate?

CARNEY: We know we have 200 employees that live in the city of Long Branch, and we will be able to accommodate the majority of them in the future Long Branch plans.

Many of those employees are in service jobs: Housekeeping, dietary, transport and security. We will have a need for those roles here in Long Branch, so employees will have a choice. This ultimately creates jobs across both campuses. We’ve assured them that we’re going to work with everybody individually to make sure that they’re able to work in the environment that they’re most comfortable.

BINJE: How will this expansion help Monmouth Medical Center better care for the entire county?

NAGY: I cannot be prouder of the work that is done here at the medical center, and not just physically here, but also in a number of the sites that are located outside of this particular campus. I think about the Ann Vogel Family Care and Wellness Center, where so many of our moms and pediatric patients are cared for in specialty situations.

This is very much about the modernization of this particular campus.