New Jersey Department of Health: Programs, Structure, and Mission

The New Jersey Department of Health (NJDH) regulates a wide range of health care settings for delivering quality of care. It covers facilities like nursing homes, hospitals, assisted living residences, home health care, ambulatory care, medical day care, and adults’ day care services, alternate family care, ambulatory surgery, assisted living program, chronic haemodialysis and behavioural health management program. The NJDH also carries out administrative, legal and financial works associated with health care. The department aims to improve the overall health of the population by strengthening the existing healthcare systems.

Running head: THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
The New Jersey Department of Health

1
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Introduction
The New Jersey Department of Health (NJDH) is a governmental agency of U.S of
New Jersey’s State Board of Health. It regulates a wide range of health care settings for
delivering quality of care like nursing homes, hospitals, assisted living residences, home
health care, ambulatory care, medical day care, and adults’ day care services, alternate family
care, ambulatory surgery, assisted living program, chronic haemodialysis and behavioural
health management program. It also covers facilities like computerised axial tomography,
drug abuse treatment, comprehensive rehabilitations hospital, extracorporeal shock wave
lithotripsy, family planning and federally qualified health centers (NJDH, 2018).
Why it is interesting?
The overall activity of the NJDH is interesting because it provides a comprehensive
coverage of the different aspects of healthcare in human life starting from chronic diseases,
communicable disease, cancer, community health and well-being and local public health.
Official website of the NJDH also states that in order to ensure compliance with the stated
regulations, the survey facilities attempts to investigate the complaints and simultaneously
penalize facilities for non-compliance. They also certify aides and administrators under
different settings like nursing homes in order to ensure proper training and experience in
order to meet the standards.
The following report provides a detailed analysis of the functional and organizational
structure of the New Jersey Department of Health.
Information about the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDH)
The main programs covered under the NJDH are highlighted below in a tabular format in an
alphabetical order

2
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Addiction
Autism
Brain injury
Cancer
Chronic disease
Communicable disease
Community Health and Wellness
Consumer Health
Drug safety
Early Intervention
Emergency Medical Services
Family Health
HIV/AIDS
Immunization
Maternal and Child health
Mental health
Occupational heath
Population health
Primary Health care
Special child health and early intervention
Spinal cord research
Tuberculosis
Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD)
Apart from covering health care programs, which are, directly associated with the
health and wellbeing of the humankind, NJDH also carry out the administrative, legal and
financial works associated with health care.These include health care financing, health

3
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
facilities evaluation, health facilities licensing, health statistics, human resource management,
legal and regulatory domains of health, minority and multicultural health, maintaining public
health laboratories, and recovery office. According to Black (2013), delivering health care
interventions is not comprehensive in controlling the health care issues prevailing in the
society. In order to implement the healthcare programs in a successful manner, measurement
of the outcomes of the health care programs is important (Boyce, Browne & Greenhalgh,
2014). This measurement of the outcomes of the health care program is done through
comparing health care statistics. Furthermore, analysis of the outcomes in health care helps in
further change in the health care policy and financial planning. All these work are important
administrative work in healthcare (Carlier et al., 2012).
Not only human health, NJHD also has avenues for providing a healthy living
atmosphere for the animals and this is done via animal welfare and veterinary public health.
NJDH also takes active initiatives in managing the environmental health. Thus it can be said
that the NJDH not only controls and co-ordinates the health care interventions and policy of
the human health, but also take active initiatives in controlling and co-coordinatingveterinary
health and environmental health.
The important facility types, which are covered under the NJDH, include
Facility type Definition
Adult Day Care
Services
Delivers diagnostic, preventive, rehabilitative, therapeutic services under nursing
and medical supervision for functionally impaired participants during day time
(12 hours)
Ambulatory care
facility
Delivers diagnostic, preventive, rehabilitative treatment services to individuals
who come to the healthcare facility to receive services and depart from the
facility on that very day
Assisted Living Provides assisted living services to individuals of publicly subsidized housing

4
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Program
Behavioral
Health
Management
Program
Provides special long-term care for the residents with severe behavior
management complications like aggressive, combative and disruptive behaviors
Birth Center Provides care to low-risk patient of maternity who are expecting to give birth to
their babies that are not premature and will not require surgical proceedings
Drug abuse
treatment
Drug free counseling program, methodone detoxification and methodone
maintenance
Family planning It deals with the reproductive health care services including contraception,
pregnancy detection and counseling in sexually transmitted diseases, cancer
screening and routine gynecological checkup
Long term acute
care hospital
It provides acute care via a broad spectrum of clinical care services for acutely ill
patients
Nursing Homes Provides health care under proper medical supervision and continuous nursing
care for about 24 hours or more that for patients with physical or mental health
complications
Psychiatric
hospital
It is a kind of hospital the provides diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitations of
individuals with primary psychiatric diagnosis under in-patient setup
Hemodialysis It is dialysis therapy that is provided to the hospitalized individual who suddenly
suffers from complete or partial loss of the kidney functions
Hospice Care
Hospital
It helps in providing quality palliative care or end of life car service
Long term acute
care
This mainly includes a comprehensive healthcare program for effective
management of the physical and mental health condition of the adult individuals.
Similar health care program is framed for the pediatric care also
Special Hospital These are specialized care service which devise care plan for the acute or

5
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
critically ill patients who demands specialized treatment and diagnosis
Ventilator Beds Special long term care for the critically ill patients who are in ventilation and 24
hours monitoring
(Source: NJDH, 2018)
Management Information NJDH
Number of employees
Shereef Elnahal who is the commissioner heads the NJDH. Under commissioner,
there are departments like legal and regulatory compliance, public health service, health care
systems and integrated systems, policy strategic planning and population health planning. All
these department has separate group of human resource who works in unison to deliver
quality health care (NJDH, 2018).
Geographic Organizational Structure
In New Jersey, every municipality is required to be served via local health department
that meets the requirement of the overall state public health regulations and laws. The local
health departments are listed in the dictionary are recognized by the New Jersey Department
of Health as the provider of the health service for public for the municipalities within their
jurisdiction. The local health departments in New Jersey that falls under the NJDH include
Atlantic county, Bergen county, Burlington county, Camden county, Cape May county,
Cumberland county, Essex county, Gloucester county, Hudson county, Mercer county,
Middlesex county, Monmouth county, Morris county, Ocean county, Passaic county, Salem
county, Somerset county, Sussex county, Union county and Warren county (NJDH, 2018).

6
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Figure: Local Health Departments, which fall under the NJDH
(Source: NJDH, 2018)
Functional Organizational Structure
Your Health Healthcare facilities
and Services
Public Health Mental Health and
Addiction
Adult care Finding proper health
care facility
 Charity care
Animal Health : Animal
Welfare and veterinary
facilities
Psychiatric
assistance and
service in suicide

7
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
 Hospitals
 Nursing
Homes
 Other Health
care facilities
prevention and other
mental health
complications
Aging Evaluation and
comparison of the
healthcare facilities
 Hospital
Record Card
 Comparison of
Nursing
Homes
 Health Care
Quality
 Health Care
Transparency
Human Health:
 Birth defects :
New born
screening
 Communicable
disease
 Immunization
 Occupational
health
 Tuberculosis
 Cancer
Medical Day Care Proper facility
licensing and
inspections
Proper inspections and
surveys, certificates and
license forms
Environmental Health
Asthma Licensing &
Certification
Workplace health:
Occupational health

8
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Credentials
It mainly encompass
certified aids of the
healthcare professionals
Birth Defects Other facilities
 Early
interventions for
the disease
 Emergency
medical service
and its operations
 Primary care
centers
 Minority health
Diabetes
Early Intervention
End of Life Care
Food Safety
Healthy Eating &
Living
Heart and Stroke
HIV/AIDS
Immunization
Maternal and Child
Health
Minority Health

9
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Newborn Screening
Sexually Transmitted
Disease
(Source: NJDH, 2018)
The category of “Your Health” is based on the personalized health options which are
sub-divided into categories like Family health, adult health, health of seniors and
multicultural health. The family health provides a comprehensive coverage to health care
requirements of different family members along with protection against common infections
or other diseases prevalent in household. The adult health is mainly to the young adults and
the middle aged adults that encompass physical health along with occupational and
workplace health. Health of the seniors encompass main health care complication
experienced by the older adults like diabetes, end of life care, osteoporosis. Senior health care
also provides information for health insurance and data for primary healthcare centers. The
“health care facilities” mainly provide a tabular representation of the detail health facilities
procured by the NJDH. Here the consumer can submit their complains and can also submit
their payments in order to avail any selected health care facility. “Public health” provides a
detailed breakup of the main healthcare service and the screening available for the society
including animal health, human health, environmental health and other health care services.
“Public Health” mainly provides coverage for physical health mental health care is provided
by “mental health and addiction service”. This service mainly covers suicide prevention
strategies or interventions along with other information of the healthcare organization which
provide mental health care. Some of the popular sate psychiatric hospital that are listed under
the NJDH include Ancora Psychiatric Hospital, Greystrone Park Psychiatric Hospital, Closed
Facilities, Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and Ann Klein Forensic Center (NJDH, 2018).

10
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
Organizational chart
The organizational chart given below depicts the structure of the Department of
Health and demonstrates the relative rank and relationships between the various positions and
jobs.

11
Shereef M. Elnahal, M.D., M.B.A.,
Commissioner
Andrea Martinez-
Mejia, M.P.A., M.A.
Chief of Staff
Joy L. Lindo, Director
Legal and Regulatory
Compliance
Jackie Cornell,
M.P.A.P.
Principal Deputy
Commissioner
Public Health
Services
Marcela Ospina
Maziarz, M.P.A.
Deputy
Commissioner
Health Systems
Deborah Hartel
Deputy
Commissioner
Magda Schaler-
Haynes, J.D., M.P.H.
Director
Policy and Strategic
Planning
Colette Lamothe-
Galette, M.P.H.
Director
Population Health
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
(Source: NJDH, 2018)

12
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
The Commissioner began serving the department from January 25, 2018. He prepares
plans for the formulation and operation of healthcare and medical facilities, while
establishing their priorities and also holds the power to compel witness testimonies and
produce health reports and documents. The Chief of Staff reports to the commissioner for
overseeing the executive management team. The health systems deputy commissioner is
involved in overseeing enforcements and inspections of all regulations. The principal deputy
commissioner maintains and improves the health and QoL for all citizens. On the other hand,
the office of legal and regulatory compliance enforce guidance on rules and statutes for the
department (NJDH, 2018).
Mission statement
The New Jersey Department of Health aims to improve the overall health of the
population by strengthening the existing healthcare systems. There are five main domains of
the department namely, Public Health Services, Integrated Health, Health Systems, the Office
of Policy and Strategic Planning and Office of Population Health, which aim to form an
effective collaboration, with the aim of accomplishing the intended goals. The mission
statement is to facilitate the access to quality and equitable services for all individuals,
communities, and families, through linguistically and culturally appropriate delivery of
healthcare services(NJDH, 2018). The department is also focused on achieving the Healthy
New Jersey 2020 initiative.
In the news
 The third annual population health summit of the New Jersey Department of Health
focused on adopting an integrated approach that aims to address opioid addiction
among the residents. This summit was successful in drawing a huge number of
community leaders, healthcare providers, and recovery advocates to the venue. The

13
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
department showed its commitment towards implementing approaches such as,
healthy food, safe housing, and medical concerns for reducing health disparities and
addressing the chronic health concern of addiction (Stainton, 2018).
 The department is helping several New Jersey hospitals are working towards
reducing the high C-section rates by 10%, by educating nurses, and staff on
supportive delivery care techniques, integrating douglas and non-medical experts,
using best protocols for regional anesthesia, and developing effective policies for
monitoring low-risk women (Diamond, 2018).
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded from a management perspective that the New Jersey
Department of Health has a poor organizational structure. This can be attributed to the fact
that the organization chart shows the Commissioner as the major person, to whom each of the
seven officials report. Presence of a good hierarchy would serve a great purpose in helping all
employees of the department to visualize where they feature in the big picture. Although the
department covers a range of programs related to the health of human beings and animals,
lack of a proper organization structure fails to differentiate between the different layers of
management, thereby increasing the risks of misinterpretation of major directives that are
passed down across layers. Furthermore, an effective hierarchical structure is required to
foster the concept of teamwork between the employees. This will make individuals working
in each program willingly cooperate with each other and feel a sense of camaraderie. Thus,
the department will be benefited and will be able to accomplish the goals related to optimal
public health if it is appropriately organized in a way that capitalizes on its strengths.

14
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
References
Black, N. (2013). Patient reported outcome measures could help transform healthcare. BMJ:
British Medical Journal, 346.
Boyce, M. B., Browne, J. P., & Greenhalgh, J. (2014). The experiences of professionals with
using information from patient-reported outcome measures to improve the quality of
healthcare: a systematic review of qualitative research. BMJ Qual Saf, bmjqs-2013.
Carlier, I. V., Meuldijk, D., Van Vliet, I. M., Van Fenema, E., Van der Wee, N. J., & Zitman,
F. G. (2012). Routine outcome monitoring and feedback on physical or mental health
status: evidence and theory. Journal of evaluation in clinical practice, 18(1), 104-110.
Diamond, M.L. (2018). NJ hospitals target state's abnormally high C-section rate.Access
date: 6th June. Retrieved from
https://www.app.com/story/money/business/consumer/2018/06/05/nj-hospitals-target-
states-abnormally-high-c-section-rate/670062002/
New Jersey Department of Health (2018). Office of Commissioner. Access date: 6th June.
Retrieved from http://www.nj.gov/health/commiss/org-chart/
New Jersey Department of Health. (2018). Local Public Health. Access date: 6th June.
Retrieved from: http://www.state.nj.us/health/lh/community/index.shtml#1
New Jersey Department of Health. (2018). Organizational Chart. Access date: 6th June.
Retrieved from: http://www.nj.gov/health/commiss/org-chart/
Stainton, L. (2018). State Seeks to Apply Population Health Goals to Opioid Addiction - NJ
Spotlight. Access date: 6th June. Retrieved from

15
THE NEW JERSEY DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/18/06/05/state-seeks-to-apply-population-health-
goals-to-opioid-addiction/