Hackensack Meridian Health embarked on a major expansion of its outpatient practices and employed a hub-and-spoke strategy to locate multiple practices of varying sizes in multiple communities. The Eatontown project occupies a former Direct Shoe Warehouse and an adjacent Toys-R-Us store, creating 45,000 SF of medical office practice space in a single location. The co-located practices are a specialist flex suite, Urgent care, Cardiac and primary care, Imaging, neuro, lab, rehab, and women’s oncology. The building will also have a shared entrance and patient waiting space along with building support and core functions. The approximately 4,000 SF urgent care space is located at the frontage with a dedicated entrance, and the specialist flex space is designed with 36 exam spaces shared among multiple practices. This location is designed to be a model for future multi-specialty practice locations within the health system.
Creating a positive patient experience was an important part of the design and planning process. Design teams worked with community representatives to plan out a typical experience (process mapping) for patients, visitors, and staff. Operationally, the goal was to simplify the patient's experience of visiting multiple sites per visit by using a virtual registration/digital process prior to visits, so the in-person experience could focus on a personal approach rather than information gathering.
