Will leadership solve distressed Newark hospital?
Taken from NJ Spotlight News
May 5, 2025
University Hospital, New Jersey’s only public acute-care hospital, needs a strong and vocal champion, advocates say, especially given ongoing reconstruction at its Newark campus and the potential for massive federal funding cuts to health care programs.
Dr. Kaitlan Baston, the former state health commissioner, said she is eager to be the hospital’s champion in the short term, while its board searches for a permanent leader. Gov. Phil Murphy named Baston to serve as interim CEO at University Hospital late last month, replacing outgoing president and CEO Ed Jimenez, who accepted a job at a health system in suburban Philadelphia in March.
“I came from a safety-net hospital and I feel like in a lot of ways I’m coming home,” Baston told NJ Spotlight News on Thursday from her new post in Newark. Baston, a family doctor and addiction specialist, worked at Cooper University Hospital, in Camden, before Murphy picked her to lead the state Department of Health in July 2023.
Baston said her personal goals aligned closely with University Hospital’s mission and vision, to provide each patient exceptional care and improve the health of Newark’s communities. In addition, she called it her “absolutely privilege and duty to the state to make sure University [Hospital] is well cared for.”
Baston is now University Hospital’s fifth leader in six years, including interim and acting CEOs, and – for family reasons – she pledged to not make it a permanent job. Advocates for the hospital hope she uses her time there well given the challenges the hospital now faces, including raising money to pay for a massive, multi-stage reconstruction project estimated several years ago to cost $1.8 billion.
University Hospital is the region’s only state-accredited Level 1 trauma center and an academic medical hub for Rutgers University’s health care programs in Newark. The 45-year-old hospital admits nearly 19,000 patients a year and treats close to 100,000 people – including many of the state’s most severe trauma victims – in its emergency department, a facility built to care for half that capacity. Renovations have created 20 private rooms, hospital officials said, yet patient volume still requires some people to be treated in the hallways, where the hospital has bed numbers painted on the walls.
The Newark hospital treats more uninsured patients than any other individual acute-care facility, according to state data, and therefore receives more state aid to help offset the cost of uncompensated care. It has also banked $200 million for the reconstruction project, part of the $450 million the state distributed to trauma centers in recent years from New Jersey’s share of federal COVID-19 pandemic relief.
University Hospital became a state-owned facility in 2013 after the state dismantled its entire medical education system, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and relocated its clinical teaching programs under Rutgers University in New Brunswick and Newark and Rowan University in the Camden area.
The hospital has experienced somewhat of a renaissance in recent years following decades of financial and operational struggles, which many familiar with the hospital’s operations blamed on a lack of leadership.
“They don’t get the respect in my view that they deserve,” Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz (R-Union), a nurse and longtime advocate for the facility, said of staff at University Hospital, which is home to several clinical specialties. University Hospital’s emergency department is named after her late husband Dr. Eric Munoz, who was also a state lawmaker before his death.
“The Newark Accords made a promise to Newark,” Munoz told NJ Spotlight News last week. In her view, the state is “not fulfilling” that pledge by underfunding University Hospital. Whoever ends up as the hospital’s next president, “I’m hoping for someone with a forceful voice who can push for their needs,” Munoz said. As it is, she said, “they feel like they get ignored.”
Many of University Hospital’s challenges were brought to light in a 2018 report from Judy Persichilli, a nurse and hospital executive Murphy hired to monitor the hospital and later named as its interim CEO. In 2019, Murphy tapped Persichilli to lead the state health department after then commissioner Dr. Shereef Elnahal stepped down to become CEO at University Hospital, a position he held until the summer of 2022, when he left to join the Biden Administration.
“I hope she continues the good work that Ed [Jimenez] tried to accomplish,” said Debbie White, president of Health Professionals and Allied Employees, the state’s largest health care union, and a longtime champion of University Hospital. “We have to support our only public hospital.”
Rutgers Chancellor Brian Strom who oversees medical education programs on the Newark and New Brunswick campuses, said Rutgers remains “deeply committed” to University Hospital and looks forward to collaborating with Baston in her interim role.
“Under Ed Jimenez’s leadership, the hospital has made tremendous strides, and we’re grateful for his partnership in advancing care, education, and innovation,” Strom said in an emailed statement. “We are confident in University Hospital’s future and have plans for continued and accelerated investment in our Newark campus. Leadership transitions are natural, but our commitment to health and the wellbeing of the Newark community remains constant.”
Jimenez told the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee that work on renovating the hospital’s over-burdened emergency department is progressing well and should be complete in June, Jimenez told the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee at a hearing in March on Murphy’s $58 billion state budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Construction crews are set to demolish a series of trailers, installed for ‘temporary’ use in the 1970s, starting this summer, Jimenez said.
“Thanks to your efforts and the continued drumbeat regarding the dire facility needs of this institution, our patients and their families are finally seeing visible improvements to a campus they felt was left behind and forgotten,” Jimenez said. However, he told lawmakers an additional $55 million in state funding is needed to cover the full cost of this first phase, a total of $327 million.
Baston said she would work closely with the state Legislature and Murphy to secure additional funding but acknowledged the difficult budget choices they face. She called the renovated emergency department “a beautiful first step investment for the community” and praised the work Jimenez did to get construction started. “I’m going to keep that momentum going,” she said.
University Hospital is slated to receive more than $208 million in hospital aid from the state through various programs designed to reimburse acute-care facilities for treating uninsured patients and support physician education, according to details of Murphy’s budget. Lawmakers have two months to finalize the plan and pass legislation outlining the spending, which Murphy must sign by July 1.
In addition, Murphy’s budget proposal calls for University Hospital to get $1 million for cancer prevention and clinical trials and another $27.5 million to support its agreement to serve as a teaching hospital for Rutgers University, both funded at the same levels as last year. The proposal recommends $42.8 million in higher education dollars for the teaching hospital, nearly 73% less than it will receive this fiscal year, however. And it zeros out money for the campus reconstruction – despite Jimenez’s call for $55 million to finish the first phase of work – and emergency medical services in Newark, items funded at $45 million and $2 million, respectively, in the current budget, which ends June 30.
Murphy’s budget proposal does recommend University Hospital receive $20 million for ongoing capital needs from revenue collected by the state’s cannabis regulatory fund, half of what the hospital was allotted this fiscal year through the state’s general fund. Jimenez said that despite the improvements, “emergency repairs continue to be a regular occurrence.” In all, Rutgers would likely collect around $71 million for operations in the coming fiscal year, 42% less than it is slated to receive though the current budget.
This math worries HPAE’s White, especially given the push by the Trump Administration and Republicans in Congress to cut $880 billion from Medicaid and related programs over 10 years, which could significantly erode funding for a safety-net facility like University Hospital. “More than any other budget year,” University Hospital “should be a priority now more than ever,” White said.