A groundbreaking ceremony was held for a new medical office building, part of Raritan Bay Medical Center in Old Bridge, on May 15. A rendering of the building is pictured above. OLD BRIDGE — After years of anticipation, staff and administration at Raritan Bay Medical Center (RBMC) celebrated the start of construction of a new medical office building at a groundbreaking ceremony May 15.
“To tell you that in Old Bridge this has been a long time coming would be one of the greater understatements since Noah said it looked like rain,” said RBMC Board of Directors Chairman Russ Azzarello, “but we’re extremely happy that there has been a lot of activity here on campus [surrounding the start of construction].”
According to RBMC President and CEO Mike D’Agnes, the new 95,000-square-foot building will be the third building on the Old Bridge campus of RBMC at Route 18 and Ferry Road. It will house a full surgical suite, a same-day surgery center, an imaging center and physician’s office space.
The new construction will “enable us to double the size of our emergency room [ER] once we move imaging services out of the [old] ER and into the new building,” D’Agnes said. “This new building will transform our Old Bridge facility by placing a greater emphasis on surgical services.”
D’Agnes said during his 13-year tenure at RBMC, the hospital’s 121 beds were nearly always full because of a lack of availability of surgical services.
“We didn’t need more beds, we just needed to move patients through a lot faster,” D’Agnes said, adding that the emergency department was dealing with 26,000 patients per year in an emergency room that is sized for 15,000 patients a year. “So [Senior Vice President of Operations Vince Costantino] finally came up with this approach [to expand the hospital].”
Dr. Kumar Dasmahapatra, chairman of the Department of Surgery and president of the RBMC medical staff, said he had been advocating the expansion of surgical facilities since he began working at the hospital.
“I didn’t think they would let me speak, because for 25 years I have complained,” Dasmahapatra said, “But I’m so happy to be here and be part of this project. I can’t tell you how much we all want this to happen quickly, to increase our level of care and really get better. I can’t wait for the day that we start operating in this new place.”
Dasmahapatra said the expanded operating room would allow the hospital to handle a much higher volume of patients and avoid turning away patients in need of urgent medical care.
“This was a very small community hospital when I first joined, but the needs of the hospital have grown significantly over the past 25 years. We should be able to provide state-of-the-art surgical care and increase surgical volume [in the new building],” he said.
Old Bridge Mayor Owen Henry was among the first to throw a shovelful of sand to ceremonially mark the start of construction on the site.
“As mayor this is my first groundbreaking — the first time I’m going to be able to grab a shovel and put a hardhat on — and I couldn’t have written the script any better,” he said.
The expansion will give residents of Old Bridge and surrounding towns the opportunity to use a state-of-the-art facility, Henry said, and will create jobs for construction and healthcare workers.
“On behalf of the residents I represent, [I want to say] how grateful we are to have this facility in our community. When we read the papers every day, we see healthcare facilities being downsized or closed. Here in Old Bridge we have one expanding, and as mayor, that means a lot to the residents of Old Bridge.”
Contact Thomas Castles at [email protected].