Hackensack Meridian Health Jersey Shore University Medical Center (JSUMC) celebrated the grand opening of HOPE Tower, a 10-story, 300,000-square-foot facility, during the summer.

Now the medical center is celebrating again as it has recently been awarded the Alliance for Action’s 2018 Distinguished Engineering Award.

The $265 million state-of-the-art facility, located on the east side of the hospital’s campus in Neptune, N.J., features a world-class cancer treatment center, modern clinical offices for pediatric and adult specialties, and high-tech academic and research space, creating a dynamic outpatient facility that focuses on all aspects of health and wellness.

“At Jersey Shore University Medical Center, we are cultivating a culture of compassion, focused on providing high-quality care and enhancing the patient experience,” says Kenneth N. Sable, M.D., MBA, FACEP, president of JSUMC and K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital. “HOPE Tower expands upon Jersey Shore’s services, serving as a hub of clinical excellence while elevating the human experience. We are continuing to bring humanity back to health care, putting our patients at the center of everything we do.”

The first two levels of the tower host a 58,000-square-foot cancer center, designed with patients’ needs in mind. The warm and welcoming layout is intended to treat the whole person as well as the disease, offering patients cancer diagnosis, consultation and treatment planning with multidisciplinary teams, all under one roof.

In addition, the new center offers the latest in technology and treatment options, including dedicated areas for infusion, radiation therapy with the most advanced TrueBeam linear accelerators.

HOPE Tower also brings together a wide range of pediatric and adult physician and medical specialties across several floors of the facility. The pediatric specialties housed in the tower include gastroenterology, endocrinology, infectious disease, neurology and hematology/oncology. The adult specialties include internal medicine, psychiatry and behavioral health, infectious disease, rheumatology, endocrinology, uro-gynecology, obstetrics and gynecology, maternal/fetal medicine and surgery.

HOPE Tower also serves as a home to Jersey Shore’s medical education programs and research services. The new facility houses team members involved in research and clinical trials, and supports patients who are participating in trials with high-tech exam rooms for treatment and evaluation.

It also features a 6,500-square-foot, state-of-the-art innovative simulation laboratory. A conference center, featuring the John K. Lloyd Amphitheater sits on the tower’s 10th floor. The 200-seat theater-style auditorium includes the latest audio-visual technology with the ability to stream live broadcasts and record sessions.

Dewberry provided surveying; site/civil, geotechnical, and traffic engineering; and landscape architecture and environmental services for the new tower. The firm also supported JSUMC with demolition of a senior housing complex that occupied the development site and offsite water, sewer, and roadway improvements to support the development.