TOMS RIVER – Community Medical Center has been undergoing surgery to expand its footprint and services.
Pat Ahearn, chief executive officer at the hospital, illustrated the four phases planned for the expansion.
The first phase was the parking garage, which visitors might have already noticed. The structure was 60 years old and had 400 spaces, he said. Now, it is almost double that number. Starting with parking was important so there would be places for visitors to the expanded hospital.
The Central Utilities Plant was Phase 2. The hospital needed a local power source and this would provide back-up redundancies in the case of an outage.
“If someone hits a pole on Route 37, we’re down,” Ahearn said. “If there’s thunderstorms, we’re down.”
The back-up generators would keep the hospital running, and emergencies would still be handled, he explained. However, people coming to CMC for scheduled procedures, such as an MRI, would have to be rescheduled. This is highly inconvenient for patients.
“We have enough power for now but we need more for the new building,” he said. The roads being dug up recently was to install the power lines.
Phase 3 is a 350,000 square foot building which will house surgery, outpatient services and private rooms.
Sixty years ago, the state only allowed 10 percent of rooms in hospitals to be private, Ahearn said. For CMC, that means 42. However, on any given day, there are 40-60 patients who need private rooms.
Phase 4 involves the Master Facility Plan – it’s a blueprint for where they want to be 10 years from now.
Included in the overall plan is a number of primary care hubs in other towns so residents can get the care they need in their own towns, he said.
“It’s an exciting time,” Ahearn said. “The community has really embraced us. People come back for more care. In August, we had the most surgeries we’ve had in 15 years.”
CMC used to be the largest non-teaching hospital but that era is over. They currently have 150 residencies and hope to be up to 200 soon.
