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 to create 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 urgent care space of approximately 4,000 SF is located on the frontage with a dedicated entrance, and the specialist flex space is designed with 36 exam spaces shared over 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 more than one site per visit by utilizing a virtual registration / digital process prior to patient visits so the in-person experience can be focused on a personal approach rather than information gathering.
