As part of an ongoing push to make health care more accessible and convenient, Hackensack Meridian Health launched a new health and wellness center in North Jersey. Located at 650 From Road in Paramus, the 150,000-square-foot, $30 million ambulatory care facility is designed to bring services and specialists out of the hospital and into the community.

After repurposing what was previously three floors of office space at the Onyx Equities-owned 350,000-square-foot, five story building, Hackensack Meridian created a one stop shop for a spectrum of internal and family medicine offerings.

From routine check-ups to managing acute and chronic conditions, Hackensack Meridian’s Paramus site is designed to foster healthy decision-making and educate patients about potential health concerns.

Mark Sparta, president of Hackensack Meridian Health North Region and president of Hackensack University Medical Center, called it “an extremely exciting project” that’s been “a long time coming.”

Sparta said, “It took about two years of planning and it started operating almost a year ago when we first moved orthopedic services there … Over the course of time, we have filtered in cardiology, primary care and neuroscience services. Futuristically, we’ll have the pediatric services there as well as the ambulatory surgery and diagnostic imaging services.”

“We expect diagnostic imaging services to be live probably within about six to eight weeks and that’ll give us a great opportunity for the physicians in the building to offer on-site imaging services to patients that they care for,” he said. “There will also be an ambulatory surgery center on that campus in order to accommodate those patients in the community where they live.”

Mirroring the look of the main hospital campus in Hackensack, the new site features a dedicated entrance that allows patients privacy from other office tenants in the building. In addition to primary care, orthopedics, cardiology and neuroscience services, the location has added allergy, rheumatology, nephrology, dermatology, physical therapy and occupational therapy in recent months. There will also be infusion, laboratory services, medical imaging and medical oncology by this summer, followed by pediatric specialties later this year.

Connection to care

Long known as a shopping destination, Paramus is becoming a medical hub. Hackensack Meridian’s new ambulatory care practice is a half mile from Valley Hospital’s newly opened 40-acre health & wellness campus on Winters Avenue and a mile-and-a-half from Bergen New Bridge Medical Center.

After noting the proximity to major highways, like Routes 4 and 17 and the Garden State Parkway, Sparta said the network’s new Paramus facility is “very accessible from a travel standpoint,” particularly for patients from northern Bergen County and across the border in Orange and Rockland counties in New York.

Within Bergen County, Hackensack Meridian’s facilities include two hospitals – Pascack Valley Medical Center in Westwood and Hackensack University Medical Center, its academic flagship in Westwood.

“In the North Region, we have always been very hospital-centric and we recognize the importance of providing much better access to patients in the communities where they live. And that’s one of the reasons why we really need to focus on developing an ambulatory footprint in the northern geography,” Sparta said.

“So much of the care that we provide based on medical advances and technologies has shifted from the inpatient hospital-based setting out into the community-based setting. And that’s terrific because it’s much more affordable and much more accessible for patients and the communities that we serve,” he continued.

While Hackensack University Medical Center is set in the center of Bergen County, Sparta pointed out that congestion along Route 17 can make it tough to reach at times. “We’ve made significant investments in the Hackensack University Medical Center campus with the opening of the Helena Theurer Pavilion in December 2022. We invested nearly three quarters of a billion dollars in new operating rooms, state-of-the-art technology and single occupancy rooms. We want to ensure that Hackensack University Medical Center stands strong and ready to take care of the sickest of the sick with very complex issues that can’t be treated out in the community,” Sparta said.

“And we’re seeing that we’re filling our ORs and we’re filling our beds with patients who have to receive care here at Hackensack because it’s the only place in New Jersey that offers that type of care that they need. But to the extent possible, the care that can be provided out in the community, we don’t want – and we don’t need – that care to come to Hackensack University Medical Center,” he explained.

“The further north that we can get to make ourselves accessible to patients … the better it is for them and the better it is for us because we don’t want to see frustrated patients coming here after they battle traffic when they don’t have to,” Sparta said.

Filling a void

Sparta said there will be more than 90 care providers at the Paramus health and wellness facility. “Of those 90 providers, over 70 of them will be physicians, others will be physician assistants and advanced practice providers,” he said. “And out of those physicians, almost 40 of them are new recruits. So, it’s not like we’re lifting providers from Hackensack University Medical Center’s campus and dropping them out in the community.

“We’re recruiting heavily in order to be able to provide more access … it’s really important for us to recruit high-quality destination providers that fit the characteristics of the level of physician at Hackensack University Medical Center and take that care out to the community at this From Road site,” he said.

“It’s a phase occupancy and we already have well established there a high volume, high quality orthopedic practice,” Sparta stated. “We have the first phase of primary care physicians there, which is seven. And that’ll be ramped up into approximately 11 or 12 when it’s fully operational and occupied.”

“We currently have a Neuroscience Institute offering there. We will in June have cancer care oncology, so it’ll be an extension of our John Theurer Cancer Center, where we’ll provide infusion therapy for both chemo infusions, but also for our institute where a number of the chronic neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis and even patients with chronic migraines will receive various types of infusions,” he explained.

“In addition to that, we will have a cardiology practice in the building. And then coming in probably late third quarter of 2024 or early fourth quarter 2024, we will have an entire pediatric specialty floor that includes pediatric dermatology, pediatric endocrinology, pediatric physiatry, pediatric developmental services, as well as pediatric neuroscience services and the complimentary pediatric physical and occupational therapy that goes along with that,” he added.

Sparta said the facility will include specialists from Hackensack Meridian’s broad spectrum of nationally ranked services, including the Joseph Sanzari Children’s Hospital, cardiology program and orthopedic program.

“It’s really important for us to be able to get out there and get these world-class services available to the folks in the community,” he said.

More than 100 million people in the U.S. don’t have a primary care provider and about a quarter of those are children, according to a report by the National Association of Community Health Centers.

Reasons for putting off care – or going without it – include lack of access to primary care services or financial costs. “It’s important to be able to provide patients, first of all with access to primary care out in the community, and secondly, ensure that those patients at a very early age – especially those with strong family history – are engaged in the appropriate preventative screenings that we know are successful in treating disease and managing those conditions in a chronic nature as opposed to them evolving into something that’s not manageable,” Sparta said.

“In general, the ambulatory setting is a much more affordable setting for patients to receive care. Hospitals are expensive places to provide care because they have to be able to provide all care and have all services available. So, it’s a high intensity, high labor expense, high-cost setting. Whereas, when we can move patients that are elective and that are scheduled to where we’re able to have predictable volumes and schedule an efficient type of office arrangement, then we can make health care a lot more affordable for patients and the entire community,” he explained.

For individuals who don’t have a PCP, Sparta said, “Obviously, they have a higher incidence of catastrophic chronic disease because there is no screenings and no annual wellness visits that are taking place. And then, when some of those folks become ill … they land in hospitals, which is never a great place to have your first contact with the health care field. So, we’re really providing a service and trying to provide access to affordable care on a scheduled elective basis rather than an emergent basis.”

In the (construction) zone

The ramp-up in Paramus comes as Hackensack Meridian, the state’s largest integrated health network, has more projects underway than ever before. Currently, the system has two dozen health and wellness centers in various stages of construction or recently opened. HMH’s newly launched ambulatory care practices include Clark, Eatontown and Paramus, which is its largest such facility to date.

In March, the system broke ground on a 60,000 square-foot medical office facility at NJ Transit’s Metropark station in Woodbridge that it expects to open it in 2025. HMH also plans to launch an 80,000-square-foot ambulatory care center on the ON3 campus in Clifton by early 2025. The network already occupies academic and R&D space at the property. And after space became vacant at a strip mall in Freehold where the network’s primary care clinic is located, HMH will expand the location to a 40,000-square-foot practice.

“If you look at all of our sites, they’ve all been repurposed in some nature. From Road is an example of how landlords and developers across the state should be reimagining some of their commercial space and allowing medical to be mixed as it’s one of the fastest – and one of the few growing sectors – in the office space market at the moment,” said Jose Lozano, Hackensack Meridian’s chief growth officer.

“In Clark, it was an old Barnes & Noble. Then we’ve got our Eatontown site right next to Amazon Fresh in a strip mall,” he said. “We really tried to repurpose some spaces and try to make it really convenient and accessible via some of the major highways and have some really good visibility,” Lozano said.

When it comes to selecting a site, Lozano said, “Our strategy team works with the real estate team and regional leadership individuals, like Mark, who is really in the market all the time.”

“We try to all blend a bit of information of, what is the market need, what are the patients in the area needing, what is it lacking, where are the services that we’re really strong at and what is a convenient location? So, when you put all those facts together, we go out and that takes a bit of time,” he said.

As for market data that drives location choices, Lozano said density, volume and population are the big factors. “Our organization covers a 70-mile span on the northeastern side of the state of New Jersey all the way down to Ocean [County], so we have a really densely populated area,” he said. “We really try to make sure that it’s accessible and we want to put it in an area where it captures the [highest number] of individuals making it convenient. What we really try to look at is that 15-to-20-minute drive time around some of these ambulatory centers and really understand what the needs are and what that sort of population looks like.”

Lozano described Metropark as a project that is “beyond exciting.”

“No one’s really building to suit out there in the market right now, but we thought this is a unique opportunity. When you look at Middlesex County, it has probably had one of the largest growths in the last decade and has become significantly younger as you look at the census. So, unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of medical space within this market, so we knew we were going to have to build a little bit from the ground up. We also had a complex situation where our corporate services had been scattered within three buildings and our leases were coming up for expiration,” he explained.

“We were trying to solve for two issues … we wanted to consolidate under one roof because we know as an organization is best if it’s under one roof. And then we also had a need for medical within the area,” he said. “It was kind of one of those ‘a-ha’ moments where we realized we have two problems, how about we try to solve them with one solution? And that’s how the concept came up with our Metropark development and we worked with our developers to actually execute.”

“We are looking at some other strategic locations too, but as you can imagine, this is already a very significant investment by the organization, largest we’ve ever done in an ambulatory site perspective,” Lozano said. We want to make sure that there are complementary to where our hospital sites are across our entire market.  So, when we looked at Eatontown, Clark, Paramus and Metropark in Woodbridge, they’re not just random sites.  They are close in proximity to our hospitals to ensure that there’s that synergy between both of those.”

Sparta said, “We strategically place these sites based on market data that we have and the services within these sites is really specific to the needs of each of those populations. They’re not cookie cutter by any stretch. They’re very specifically custom tailored to what the service needs are for the communities that reside around, the patients that reside around in the communities around these centers. So, we put a lot of thought and a lot of strategic brainpower into ensuring that we’re mission-driven organizations and that we service the community needs for the greatest extent of our ability.”