Overlook Medical Center Pursues Plans for Helipad

Atlantic Health System's Overlook Medical Center filed an application with the New Jersey Department of Transportation Wednesday seeking approval to build a helipad in order to advance the hospital's stroke center. 

As New Jersey’s leading provider of Neuroscience care, Overlook houses the Atlantic Neuroscience Institute (ANI), which serves as the hub for the New Jersey Stroke Network, a group of hospitals treating 40 percent of the state’s stroke patients, according to the hospital, which maintains that constructing a helipad will play a vital role in its continued development as the premier stroke center in the state. 

“Overlook Medical Center has assembled a team of the best and brightest neuroscience practitioners in the nation,” said Alan Lieber, president, Overlook Medical Center. “Without a helipad, we are losing valuable, life-saving opportunities to engage these doctors. With our staff’s ability to provide innovative care and expertise, a helipad is essential to ensuring stroke victims in critical, time sensitive situations can access our facility.”

The helipad would be designed specifically for hospital-to-hospital transport of patients requiring advanced neurological care, according to the medical center, and is intended to shorten transportation-related delays for stroke patients in need of urgent, highly-specialized care when time is of the essence, according to Overlook, which estimates the number of flights to range from five to nine per month.

In the past, Overlook's proposal to build a helipad drew the ire of residents who mobilized to form Citizens Against the Helipad. The grassroots group was encouraged earlier this year when Superior Court Judge Karen Cassidy affirmed the Summit Zoning Board's 2010 rejection of the project. In a letter to the editor, the group anticipated that Overlook would continue to pursue the helipad and vowed to once again fight the plan.

In a press release, the medical center stated that the helipad would not be used to receive trauma patients from the surrounding area – a concern expressed by some Summit residents because Overlook Medical Center is not a trauma center and is incapable of becoming one. Atlantic Health System’s Morristown Medical Center, a short distance away, already serves that purpose, and would be the receiving facility for trauma-related transfers.

Because the goal of the helipad is to expedite the treatment of stroke victims – a very specific group of patients – the small number of flights into Overlook Medical Center would not result in significant economic gain for the hospital, which is a not-for-profit facility, the center stated. 

“Overlook Medical Center presented a clear case for the important need of a helipad at its facility, and looks forward to hearing from the New Jersey Department of Transportation with regard to this application,” said Lieber.