Two Central Jersey specialized hospitals announce merger

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The two specialized hospitals that provide long-term acute care have merged to create the expanded and renamed Specialty Hospital of Central Jersey, a hospital-within-a-hospital that has now doubled in size to 50 beds on two floors within Kimball Medical Center, in Lakewood.

Specialty Hospital of Central Jersey is the result of the merger of Specialty Hospital at Kimball and Specialty Hospital at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, which closed in May. Both Kimball and Monmouth belong to the Barnabas Health hospital system.

Specialty Hospital of Central Jersey is operated by AcuteCare Health System, a privately owned corporation formed in 2002 to establish and manage long term acute care hospitals, called LTACHs. An LTACH cares for patients with medically complex conditions requiring, on average, a stay of at least 25 days.

“With the opening of Specialty Hospital of Central Jersey, we are extremely pleased to integrate our full array of services into one state-of-the-art facility, centrally located within New Jersey,” said AcuteCare Chief Medical Officer Howard Lebowitz. “It comes at an important time when we continue to experience an increasing demand by patients.”

Specialty Hospital at Monmouth opened in 2004 and Kimball opened in 2005; the two facilities have treated about 3,000 patients combined in the past decade.

Patients may have one or more diagnoses that include cardiovascular or cardiopulmonary disease, congestive heart failure, cancer, respiratory infections or disorders, stroke or other neurological disorders, musculoskeletal disease or spinal cord injuries, or kidney disorders. They also may require post-surgical care, ventilator dependence, wound care and long-term IV antibiotic therapy.

Reporter Beth Fitzgerald is @BethFitzgerald8 on Twitter.