Hackensack Meridian Health is investing $35 million in Hackensack Meridian Raritan Bay Medical Center to expand behavioral health and long-term acute care beds.
Perth Amboy-based Raritan Bay Medical Center has provided high-quality, compassionate care to its community for more than a century.
“Our investment will strengthen patient access to critical community services and meet their future health care needs,” said Robert Garrett, CEO of Hackensack Meridian Health.
The ongoing pandemic has placed a spotlight on the growing needs for behavioral health services, and this investment will add to the competence and high-quality care available at Raritan Bay Medical Center.
Hackensack Meridian Health’s plan to reimagine Raritan Bay Medical Center will include:
- Maintaining medical surgical, ICU and OB/GYN beds and a full-service emergency department to continue to serve and meet the inpatient needs of its communities.
- An investment of $35 million in behavioral health and long-term acute care services.
- An expansion of access and capacity to meet patient demand by increasing behavioral health beds at Raritan Bay Medical Center to 81, subject to New Jersey Department of Health approval.
- An effort to recruit additional physicians to enhance access and scope of services, and meet the community’s needs.
- Behavioral health will become an inpatient, specialized center for excellence that includes geriatric care and dual diagnosis (psychiatry/addiction) services. Throughout the five-year phased plan, specialty care programs will be added to behavioral health that will allow for patients and the community to receive this specialized service with a seamless continuum of care, close to home.
- For LTACH, Raritan Bay will be a discharge option for patients who would typically exceed length of stay at all HMH sites and become a specialty ventilator hospital in the HMH network, a new service that is not currently offered by HMH.
“Behavioral health issues are often stigmatized topics resulting in prolonged suffering in silence in our Latino community,” Perth Amboy Mayor Helmin Caba said. “With this investment in Perth Amboy, it addresses the issue head on with early and effective interventions and raises awareness in normalizing conversations around them to ultimately improve our city’s health overall. We are proud to work with Hackensack Meridian and grateful for this commitment to our residents.”
The “Reimagining Raritan Bay Medical Center” efforts will also add union construction jobs in the short run, and permanent jobs for these additional services.
LTACH beds are expected to open in the first quarter of 2022, followed by Behavioral Health beds in mid-2022.
