Ridgewood-Valley Health Hospital opens new campus in Paramus

NEW JERSEY - Ridgewood-Valley Health Hospital opened the doors to its new, nearly $900 million campus in Paramus.

Patients started Sunday morning waking up in a bed inside the 73-year-old Valley Health hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey, but will fall asleep among the modern trappings of a brand-new, 900,000-square-foot facility in Paramus.

"It's a massive undertaking," said Robert Brenner, the president of Valley Health System.

Valley Health System staff started Sunday with a ribbon cutting at 5:30 a.m. at its new address – 4 Valley Health Plaza.

Almost immediately after and simultaneously, the emergency doors opened to the public and the massive move from Ridgewood began, including relocating more than 200 patients.

"Most of the equipment in the hospital is brand new," Karteek Bhavsar, the Valley Health System COO said. "There is a lot of equipment that we didn't need to move over here."

That technology includes 370 new beds, a larger emergency department, and separate corridors for staff and suppliers. Staff ensured all the latest technology was hooked up and working, like the AI cameras that help anticipate falling, smart screens, and sinks that digitally record if a doctor or nurse washed their hands.

The new campus has a feature that patients and their families will really enjoy. Individual rooms, single occupancy, and it comes with a couch that folds down to a bed. Not only that, but every single room in the new campus can have negative pressure.

"When you have a pandemic and you have patients admitted with COVID, you want the pressure in the room to be negative so that virus is not coming out," Brenner said. "It's actually contained and put through the exhaust system as opposed to spreading throughout the hospital."

It took more than five years to design, build, and open the hospital, costing $897 million. 

"This facility will continue to take care of OB, cardiac care, oncology, surgical services, and all the stuff that we did at Ridgewood is now at our Paramus campus," Bhavsar said.