Hospital marks 30 years of service to community
Freehold Area Hospital
opened in 1971 to serve
Western Monmouth
PHOTO COURTESY OF CENTRASTATE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM As CentraState Medical Center, Freehold Township, celebrates its 30th anniversary, the facility continues to grow with the construction of a new medical arts building, set to open in March 2002.
FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP — Over the past 30 years, CentraState Medical Center has become an institution upon which the residents of Western Monmouth County have come to rely.
On Sept. 20, 1971, the medical center, then called Freehold Area Hospital, opened its doors and gave residents of Western Monmouth County a comprehensive medical facility to call their own.
Prior to the opening of Freehold Area Hospital, residents had to travel to Neptune to Fitkin Hospital (now Jersey Shore Medical Center).
In emergency situations, some residents of Western Monmouth County could face an ambulance ride of more than 30 minutes before receiving critical care.
This need for a hospital in the Freehold area was the reason a group of prominent local residents came together 40 years ago to get the ball rolling on a local hospital that would serve the needs of Western Monmouth County.
An article from the Aug. 1, 1968 edition of the Freehold Transcript stated, "When plans for the Greater Freehold Area Hospital were first initiated, existent problems of distance to established hospitals, actual traveling time for ambulances, vehicular congestion on many of the area’s main arteries and the ever-present possibilities of the unnecessary loss of life were cited as vital reasons for instituting a health facility to serve the needs of this area."
Leslie Tinkler, who lived in Manalapan at the time, was one resident who helped make this dream a reality. In a recent conversation with Greater Media Newspapers, Tinkler recalled that he helped to direct a group of Manalapan residents who collected more than $150,000 in pledges and donations toward the new hospital.
The hospital cost about $4 million to build, most of which was raised through donations, according to newspaper articles from the time.
"We went from house to house as if we were selling vacuum cleaners," Tinkler said, recalling that there were a lot of things they had taken for granted when his family moved to Manalapan from New York, including the presence of a local hospital.
Tinkler was also involved in helping to raise funds for the construction of Temple Shaari Emeth, Manalapan.
In recalling the need for a local hospital, Tinkler remembered one occasion when his neighbor ran out of her house screaming that her daughter had swallowed laundry detergent.
Tinkler said he took the woman and her daughter to the Freehold First Aid Squad building but no one was there, and they had to drive all the way to the hospital in Neptune.
"I made up my mind at that point that we needed a medical facility in the Freehold area," he said.
Once the concept of a Freehold hospital was born and fund-raising efforts began, the next phase was to plan what would be needed at the hospital and how it would be laid out. That task fell largely into the hands of physicians such as Dr. Glenn Barkalow, one of the hospital’s founding physicians.
Barkalow said much of the hospital’s design was left up to architects and engineers but that as the hospital got closer to its opening date, it was the doctors who played a primary role in the setup of the building’s functions and equipment.
Freehold Area Hospital opened with two surgeons, three or four family practitioners and two or three pediatricians, Barkalow said.
Facilities such as the coronary care unit were small at first. There was no recovery room, and the emergency room came on line shortly after the hospital opened. However, the staff was able to handle just about anything, Barkalow said.
Early on, the facility was staffed by local doctors who took shifts at the hospital. As the hospital became busier, he said, administrators hired more full-time doctors.
Barkalow recalled that the first surgery performed at Freehold Area Hospital was an appendectomy and the first admission was a patient who had suffered a heart attack.
"And they both made out OK," he said.
Eventually, the hospital that had its origins in the 1960s as a dream on the part of a small group of Freehold-area residents became part of the CentraState Healthcare System and its name was changed to CentraState Medical Center. An affiliation later followed with Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, New Brunswick.
"Over the years the hospital has grown by leaps and bounds," Barkalow said. "There’s just something new going on there all the time."
He noted that there are now more than 50 surgeons and doctors of all specialties working at the hospital.
"We’ve had board certified physicians in every specialty, as a means to stay on that specialty," Barkalow said.
John T. Gribbin, the medical center’s president and CEO, points to new construction at the hospital as an example of the facility’s continuing expansion.
"The most obvious sign of our growth is the construction of the Medical Arts Building adjacent to CentraState Medical Center," he said.
The Medical Arts Building, scheduled to open in March, will house an outpatient surgery center, a radiation therapy center and doctors’ offices. The new building is one of many plans that hospital executives have for the facility’s future expansion.
And though those involved with the hospital are looking ahead, they took a moment recently to look back. A founders reception was held on Sept. 7, and a 40th anniversary celebration ball was held on Sept. 8. The first ball was held in 1961 as a means to help raise money for the construction of the hospital.
"Our plans for the future wouldn’t be possible without the solid foundation laid by the very founders we honored that weekend," Gribbin said. "On behalf of the board of trustees and our more than 1,800 employees, I salute the founders for their foresight and dedication."