By Sunayana Prabhu
Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) recently announced “a transformational $125 million gift” from an anonymous donor. The gift will support the expansion of Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune and will name a pavilion after the late John K. Lloyd. Lloyd was a visionary healthcare executive who spent four decades forming the healthcare network, one of the state’s largest, HMH said.
The hospital leadership said the gift is the largest philanthropic commitment in HMH’s history and is unprecedented in New Jersey healthcare. It is also among the largest donations ever made to a hospital or health system in the nation, according to HMH.
Jersey Shore sees more than 100,000 emergency department visits each year and regularly operates at or near inpatient capacity, HMH said. The gift comes as the healthcare network moves forward with a more than $1 billion, 10-year master facility plan for the Neptune campus. The plan includes a new critical care tower, 24 new operating rooms and expanded patient facilities.
According to HMH, nine-figure gifts to American hospitals remain rare, and nearly all of them carry the donor’s name. The donor, who declined an eponymous building, asked instead that a pavilion at Jersey Shore University Medical Center be named after Lloyd.
“In a year when the largest gifts in American healthcare have come from some of the most recognizable names in the country, someone chose to give $125 million and ask for nothing – no name on the building, no announcement, no recognition,” Robert C. Garrett, chief executive officer of Hackensack Meridian Health, said.
“They asked us to honor John Lloyd instead. That tells you everything about what this gift is really about,” he said.
The donation puts HMH’s gift above several other major individual philanthropic gifts to New Jersey hospitals and health systems in recent years. In 2021, philanthropists Leon and Toby Cooperman donated $100 million to Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. In July 2026, George E. Norcross III gave $100 million to Cooper University Health Care. In 2025, Holy Name Medical Center in Teaneck received a $75 million gift from the Douglas M. Noble Family Foundation. And much closer to home, Anne and Sheldon Vogel gave $50 million to Monmouth Medical Center in 2020 to help establish the Vogel Medical Campus in Tinton Falls.
Honoring John K. Lloyd
Lloyd was hailed as a healthcare industry icon who helped reshape New Jersey’s medical landscape. His death Feb. 13, 2024, was mourned by family, friends and colleagues and by members of the community he served.
Lloyd was named president of Jersey Shore Medical Center in 1982, “at a moment when the hospital stood at a crossroads,” HMH noted. During his tenure, the hospital developed its cardiac surgery services, a regional trauma center, a comprehensive stroke center and the region’s first state-designated children’s hospital.
Lloyd led the 1997 merger that created Meridian Health. In 2016, he helped bring Meridian Health and Hackensack University Health Network together to form Hackensack Meridian Health. He later served as co-CEO of HMH with Garrett until retiring in 2018.
A Princeton University graduate and a first lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, having served from 1968 to 1971, Lloyd entered healthcare in 1972. He later received the New Jersey Hospital Association’s Healthcare Professional of the Year award, NJBIZ’s Icon Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American College of Healthcare Executives of New Jersey.
“Naming the John K. Lloyd Pavilion is deeply personal for all of us. John’s fingerprints are on everything we have built together,” Garrett said.
Lloyd’s wife, Maureen Lloyd, said the tribute reflects his connection to the hospital and its surrounding community.
“John devoted his life to Jersey Shore and to the people of this community. He believed a hospital was more than a building – it was a promise to your neighbors,” she said.
“To see his name on this pavilion, and to know that a gift of this magnitude will care for patients here for generations, would have meant everything to him,” she said. “Our family is profoundly grateful to this donor, and to the doctors, nurses, and team members who carry John’s mission forward every day.”
Expanding Jersey Shore
Jersey Shore University Medical Center recently opened a $45 million cardiovascular suite, which HMH said has nearly tripled capacity for heart and stroke care.
The Neptune campus is also home to K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital and a Level III neonatal intensive care unit. HMH identifies Jersey Shore as the only Level I adult and Level I pediatric trauma center in the area.
The new donation comes as HMH continues its “Be the Difference” fundraising campaign, launched in 2021 with a $1 billion goal. The campaign focuses on patient care, research, medical education and nursing, and access to care.
“Philanthropy changes what is possible,” Joyce Hendricks, president and chief development officer of the Hackensack Meridian Health Foundation, said.
“A gift of $125 million – the largest in our history and the largest of its kind ever made in New Jersey healthcare – reflects a donor’s deep confidence in our doctors, nurses, and other clinicians,” she said.
“It will help us expand access, advance the most sophisticated treatments available anywhere in the country, and ensure that world-class care is not something families have to travel far to find. It’s already in their backyard,” Joyce added.
HMH is also investing in other Monmouth County facilities. Riverview Medical Center in Red Bank is undergoing a $56 million expansion that includes a redesigned emergency department and a new 20-room private oncology unit. The project is scheduled for completion in 2027.
The article originally appeared in the September 24 – 30, 2026 print edition of The Two River Times.
