Ocean Medical Center Parent Meridian Health Merging With Hackensack Health System

Meridian Health, the parent organization of Ocean Medical Center in Brick and Southern Ocean Medical Center in Manahawkin, announced Thursday in a joint release with the Hackensack University Health Network that the two organizations will merge, plans that would create the state’s largest health care system, according to an article on NJ Biz.com.

The new network would have annual revenue of $3.44 billion, nine acute care hospitals and two children’s hospitals, 23,400 employees, 3,181 hospital beds and more than 130,000 patient admissions a year.

Hackensack Meridian Health would be larger than the $3 billion Barnabas Health, now the state’s largest health care system. The other Meridian hospitals in the merger are Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune and its K Hovnanian Children’s Hospital; Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank and Bayshore Community Hospital in Holmdel. That doesn’t include the two hospitals that are part of a proposed merger Meridianannounced last month with Raritan Bay Medical Center in Perth Amboy.

Hackensack and Meridian said they’ve signed a memorandum of understanding to merge, to be followed by four months of due diligence prior to a definitive agreement.

For the first two and a half years after the merger is final, Hackensack’s Robert C. Garrett and Meridian’s John K. Lloyd would be co-presidents and co-chief executives; then Garrett takes over as president and CEO. Garrett, 57, joined Hackensack in 1981 and was named CEO in 2009. Lloyd, who is 68, joined Meridian’s Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune as president in 1982. In 1997 he led Jersey Shore’s merger with Ocean Medical Center in Brick and Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank to create Meridian Health; Lloyd was appointed CEO of Meridian.

“First and foremost, this is about delivering value to the patients we serve, which means the highest quality at the most appropriate cost,” Garrett said. “Our combined organization would serve a much broader geography, expanding access to services and developing a vast array of new non-hospital services to conveniently serve area communities.”

“Today’s announcement brings us one step closer to providing our counties and surrounding regions with a strong community and patient-focused health care system while becoming a national leader in the transformation of health care delivery,” Lloyd told NJBiz.