Ocean Medical Center Seeks Expanded E.R., Additional Floors

Ocean Medical Center plans to expand its emergency department from an 8,000 square foot facility to a 46,000 square foot facility in an ambitious move that will drastically change the appearance and reach of the Jack Martin Boulevard .

After a nearly four hour-long meeting of the township's planning board Wednesday night, the decision on whether to approve the hospital's plan was carried to another meeting in January, but hospital officials laid out their plans in detail for the greatly-expanded facility.

"One of the first things I learned when I joined Ocean Medical Center, and it was an alarming fact, was that 25 percent of our emergency patients are treated in hallway stretchers," said Dean Lin, Ocean Medical Center's president, who has been on the job since April.

He said an expanded facility is a necessity.

"The local residents here deserve this level of clinical excellence, and to have stellar health care close to home," Lin said. "This project addresses that need."

The expansion plan calls for the emergency department to double its capacity from 24 beds to 49 beds, and increase the department's physical size by more than five times, from 8,000 square feet to 46,000 square feet.

The hospital currently has about 51,000 emergency room visits per year, according to Charles Griffin, one of the architects of the proposed new addition. He told planning board members that the current E.R. facility is less than half of the space recommended by the College of American Emergency Department Physicians for the volume of patients Ocean Medical Centers treats.

"The hospital is making a big investment," Griffin said.

Under the proposed plan, a three-story addition will be added to the hospital to the west of the existing building, eating up a majority of a parking lot there. The emergency department will be located on the first floor, and the second and third floors will overhang the emergency drop-off location. Planners said at the meeting that in years to come another two floors could be added on top of the proposed three.

The second and third floors of the new addition will be "shell space" to start, though 36 private hospital rooms will be planned for the third floor. Hospital officials have not determined what the current emergency room will be used for, according to Chris Cirrotti, an engineer on the project, but the Family Care area of the current emergency department will evolve to become an administrative suite.

If approved, the new addition will take about 20 months to complete, Cirrotti said, and an interim entrance to the current emergency room will be created during that time period.

In addition to the new emergency department, the expansion project will include a new loading dock - an underground facility for materials handling. At that facility, medical and surgical supplies will delivered almost daily, according to Regina Foley, the hospital's Chief Operating Officer. The existing loading dock will be used for food deliveries.

Several Brick Township residents whose homes would border the new facility came to the meeting to voice their displeasure with the plan, however. Though there was no public comment period since the remainder of the meeting was carried to another date, neighbors of the facility told Brick Patch that they were concerned over the buffer zone between the hospital and their houses, which would be less than 50 feet in some places. Additionally, a state Coastal Area Facility Review Act permit the hospital must obtain before construction calls for trees and backyard areas in a right-of-way between the hospital and residences to be cleared, as well as a berm separating the homes from the hospital.

Hospital officials said at the meeting that they are planning a sound barrier wall to prevent noise from overflowing from the hospital grounds, but several local residents said they were concerned about the relocation of the loading dock and trash collection areas ruining their quality of life. They also balked at windows that could be installed on one of the sides of the addition that could reflect light back at their homes.

But Cirrotti promised hospital contractors would work with local residents to mitigate inconveniences.

"It makes good sense to work that out in consultation with the neighborhood," he told board members, concerning the loss of the vegetation in the right-of-way, and other noise issues.

Since all of the issues relating to the site could not be handled in one meeting, a special meeting has been set for Jan. 4, 2012. The proceedings from Wednesday's meeting will continue then, and public comment will, presumably, be accepted.