St. Mary's General Hospital (Passaic, New Jersey)

St. Mary's General Hospital is an acute care hospital offering a broad range of health care services and community outreach programs. The hospital campus is located in Passaic, New Jersey on a plot of land bordered on the south by Oak Street, the north by Crescent Avenue, the west by Lafayette Avenue, and the east by Boulevard.

St. Mary's address, officially, is 350 Boulevard. For most of its existence, however, the hospital operated at a facility located at 211 Pennington Avenue in the Passaic Park section of the city. It is affiliated with the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth, a Roman Catholic convent in Morris Township, New Jersey.

As of 2014, St. Mary's is owned by Prime Healthcare Services. It added the "General" to its name following the acquisition.^[1]

Description

St. Mary’s Hospital currently serves approximately 13,000 inpatients annually, in addition to caring for 10,500 patients requiring same-day procedures. A new ER Fast Track Center was added in 2009 to better accommodate the nearly 35,000 visits to St. Mary’s busy ER each year.^[2]

St. Mary's Hospital main facility located at 350 Boulevard

History of hospitals in Passaic

At one time, Passaic was home to two other hospitals besides St. Mary's. Passaic Beth Israel Hospital, the city's other religious hospital (Jewish), was located on Parker Avenue near Passaic's northern border with neighboring Clifton. Passaic General Hospital, later known as The General Hospital Center at Passaic, was located where St. Mary's currently operates, in the complex at 350 Boulevard. St. Mary's, as noted above, was located at 211 Pennington Avenue in Passaic Park.

Though comprehensive in their medical services, each original Passaic hospital had its own specialty. The General Hospital Center at Passaic's was cardiology, as it was renowned for its Eastern Heart Institute and for pioneering the first open heart surgery in the state; Passaic Beth Israel Hospital was a leader in treating cancer, having respected center of excellence in the field on oncology, and St. Mary’s Hospital was lauded for its maternal-child and behavioral health programs.

2000-2004: merging of General and Beth Israel, eventual bankruptcy

In 2000, Atlantic Health Systems acquired the General Hospital Center at Passaic. Four years later, the owners of Beth Israel Hospital bought General from Atlantic and closed the Parker Avenue facility, merging the operations of both hospitals into the Boulevard facility. The merged hospital took on the name PBI Regional Medical Center. Within two years, PBI Regional filed for bankruptcy due to mismanagement from administration and staff.

2006: St. Mary's steps in

St. Mary's, which was having problems maintaining its 112-year-old facility, was called on to save the failing hospital and received a grant from the state to purchase the hospital and move their operations to the Boulevard site, thus leaving Passaic with one surviving hospital.

Although on March 9, 2009, St. Mary's Hospital filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a federal bankruptcy judge approved of its reorganization plan less than a year from filing, as reported in the week of March 2, 2010. "St. Mary's emerges from Chapter 11 stronger and better than before," said Michael J. Sniffen, St. Mary's president/CEO, in a media release. "After less than one year, we emerge revitalized, improved, and re-committed to serving the community and the physicians that have so loyally supported us through this difficult process." ^[3]

The facility on Pennington Avenue was maintained for psychiatric admissions and care for some time after the rest of the hospital moved. However, St. Mary's closed its psychiatric unit on May 12, 2009, transferring admissions to Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville, New Jersey.^[4] The Psychiatric Emergency Screening Unit moved to St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson; this unit is the primary facility used for psychiatric emergency care in Passaic County.[2] This now leaves the original facility empty. From 2009 to 2010 the building was used by NBC to film episodes of the first season of the medical drama Mercy (TV series).^[5]

Notable people

Physician and poet William Carlos Williams was affiliated with St. Mary's predecessor, Passaic General Hospital, where he served as the hospital's chief of pediatrics. The hospital paid tribute to Williams with a memorial plaque that states "we walk the wards that Williams walked."^[6][7]

References

Coordinates: 40°51′04″N 74°07′42″W / 40.8510°N 74.1283°W / 40.8510; -74.1283