Hackensack Meridian Health and St. Joseph's Health formed a clinical partnership, the not-for-profit New Jersey health systems announced Wednesday.
The partnership includes an ambulatory care joint venture, a new women's health center and the addition of two proton-therapy machines, executives said. The collaboration will also bring more specialists to the area, which officials hope will boost access to care.
"Partnerships are the future of health care, and together, with like-minded partners like St. Joseph's Health, we will be able to transform healthcare delivery," Gordon Litwin, chair of the Hackensack Meridian Health board, said in prepared remarks.
The new clinical partnership builds on an existing collaboration between Hackensack and St. Joseph's. In 2017, Hackensack Meridian Health and St. Joseph's Health formed the Visiting Health Services of New Jersey, a jointly-owned home health and hospice agency spanning Bergen, Passaic and Morris counties.
Hackensack has 17 hospitals and a network with more than 500 locations including ambulatory care centers, surgery centers, home health services, long-term care and assisted living communities, fitness and wellness centers, rehabilitation centers, urgent care centers and physician offices.
St. Joseph's has two acute-care hospitals, a children's hospital, a long-term care facility, home care and more than 36 ambulatory care centers throughout a highly consolidated northern New Jersey market.