Southern Ocean adds thousands of residents; Southern Ocean Medical Center is catching up

STAFFORD - Southern Ocean Medical Center has broken ground on a $31.4 million project that will include new operating rooms and help the hospital keep up with the region's population growth, the facility's president said this week.

Construction crews are building a 22,000-square foot department that will have six operating rooms and will be large enough to accommodate the hospital's new robotic technology. The project is expected to be completed in 30 months.

"As our community is changing and growing, it will allow better access to operating rooms quickly," said Michele Morrison, president of Southern Ocean Medical Center.

The hospital, owned by Edison-based Hackensack Meridian Health, has 1,000 employees, and mainly serves towns from Lacey to Little Egg Harbor. The 52-year-old facility has been on a growing spree. In addition to the bigger operating rooms, the hospital has expanded its cardiac care and is applying to the state to provide more maternity care.

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The expansion reflects a population that has increased quickly since COVID-19 in 2020, when people fled the cities and moved to the Jersey Shore in search of safety. In some cases, they started living full-time in what had been seasonal homes, aided by technology that allowed them to work remotely.

During that time, for example, Long Beach Island's year-round population rose from 10,000 to 30,000, Long Beach Township Mayor Joseph Mancini said.

"It totally changes the dynamic of health care in the area," said Mancini, who chaired the fundraising campaign for the operating room project. "It's funny, people from Bergen County say, 'I'm trying to have an operation, I'll have it at Hackensack or NYU' or wherever. But the problem is when they are on the island, you might have a medical event that has to be taken care of right away and you're certainly not going to make it if you need to get on the Parkway on a weekend."

Morrison, 58, of Stafford, has spearheaded the growth. She is a graduate of Central Regional High School in Berkeley and started her career in health care as a nurse in the emergency department before making the switch to administration.

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She was named president of Southern Ocean Medical Center in January 2020, only to find the hospital the victim of a cyberattack on her first day and then engulfed by the pandemic three months later.

Since then, the number of patients has climbed. The number of emergency room visits has increased from 35,000 a year before the pandemic to 49,000. The number of surgeries has increased by 8% to 12%. And the hospital plans to add 20 acute-care beds, she said.

"We have primarily had a big Medicare population here at Southern Ocean, and that has changed," Morrison said. "We are seeing far younger people moving to southern Ocean County. And as our population is changing and growing … our responsibility as a nonprofit community hospital is to meet the needs of our community."

The remodeled surgery department will include a waiting area, pre- and post-surgical areas and a new sterile processing area. It is part of a broader expansion. The hospital two years ago added two da Vinci devices to perform robotic surgery. It has recruited two colorectal surgeons, a thoracic surgeon, a urologist and a general surgeon.

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Southern Ocean Medical Center still will transfer trauma patients to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune. But other departments at the hospital might be expanding soon. The hospital, which delivers about 330 babies a year, has applied to the state to become a Level II nursery, which would allow it to take care of premature babies as well, Morrison said.

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"It's really important that we are changing and growing to meet the needs of our community," she said. "In the state of New Jersey, where we're so densely populated, no mom should have to drive 20 miles to have a baby."

Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter at the Asbury Park Press who has been writing about the New Jersey job market, real estate, and the health care industry since 1999. He can be reached at mdiamond@gannettnj.com.

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Southern Ocean adds thousands of residents; Southern Ocean Medical Center is catching up