Monmouth Medical Center Again Named Top Teaching Hospital by The Leapfrog Group

Long Branch – Highlighting its nationally recognized achievements in patient safety and quality, Monmouth Medical Center (MMC), a Regional Medical Campus of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, has been named a Top Teaching Hospital by The Leapfrog Group for a fourth time.

Announced today at the Leapfrog Annual Meeting and Awards Dinner, the Leapfrog Top Hospital award is widely acknowledged as one of the most competitive honors American hospitals can receive. The Top Hospital designation is awarded by The Leapfrog Group, an independent hospital watchdog organization.

Among thousands of hospitals in the country, MMC was one of just 73 of the nation’s hospitals recognized as a Top Teaching Hospital, and among just four in New Jersey, and the only hospital in Monmouth and Ocean counties to be included on the Leapfrog list. The Top Teaching Hospital Award comes on the heels of MMC’s 26th overall “A” Hospital Safety Grade, also from the Leapfrog Group.

“This impressive achievement is a testament to our respected reputation as a university-level medical center that attracts the top physicians to our teaching faculty,” said President and CEO Eric Carney. “Our resident physicians and medical students are an integral part of our RWJBarnabas Health mission to partner with our communities to build and sustain a healthier New Jersey as an academic health system. This recognition also speaks to our vision to be the premier health care destination providing patient-centered, high-quality academic medicine in a compassionate and equitable manner.”

MMC serves as a regional medical campus of Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School to teach third- and fourth-year medical students. It is a member of the Council of Teaching Hospitals of the Association of American Medical Colleges, a status held by only 400 of the nation’s 6,000 hospitals, and trains residents and fellows in Dental Medicine, Internal Medicine, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Orthopaedic Surgery, Pathology, Pediatrics, Pharmacy, Diagnostic Radiology, and General Surgery.

Medical education has long played a key role at MMC.  In fact, in 1945, the hospital established its first residency program in orthopaedics – the first such program in New Jersey – to meet the needs of physicians returning from World War II trained in treating battlefield trauma. In June, the hospital celebrated the 80th anniversary of its Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Program as it graduated its class of 2025.

“As a teaching hospital, Monmouth Medical Center prides itself not just on providing excellent health care, but on preparing the physicians of tomorrow,” said Chief Academic Officer Dr. Joseph Jaeger. “Widely recognized for the quality of their programs, teaching hospitals are responsible for training new generations of physicians and are the frontrunners in medical research and technology.”

Performance across many areas of hospital care is considered in establishing the qualifications for the award, including infection rates, maternity care, and the hospital’s capacity to prevent medication errors. The rigorous standards are defined in each year’s Top Hospital Methodology.

“This year marks Leapfrog’s 25th anniversary—and the 25th year of the Leapfrog Hospital Survey—making it especially meaningful to recognize our 2025 Top Hospitals and Top ASCs,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group. “These honorees are a testament to the extraordinary dedication of these facilities’ entire teams, boards, clinicians, administrators, staff and community volunteers. You don’t achieve results like this without everyone putting their heart into patient care.”

To qualify for the Top Hospitals distinction, hospitals must submit a Leapfrog Hospital Survey and achieve the highest performance scores in its category. The selection of Top Hospitals 2025 is based on surveys from nearly 1,900 hospitals. To see the full list of institutions honored as 2025 Top Hospitals, visit www.leapfroggroup.org/tophospitals.

Monmouth Medical Center, an RWJBarnabas Health facility, along with The Unterberg Children’s Hospital, is a regional teaching campus for Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. As the first hospital in Monmouth and Ocean counties, Monmouth Medical Center offers the most experienced surgeons in robotics and other minimally invasive procedures as well as bariatric and joint and spine surgery. Delivering more babies annually than all other hospitals in Monmouth and Ocean counties combined, Monmouth Medical Center was recently one of 16 New Jersey hospitals recognized by Newsweek magazine as a top maternity hospital. It was the first hospital in New Jersey and the 11th in the country to earn Magnet Recognition with Distinction® from the American Nurses Credentialing as a reflection of its nursing professionalism, teamwork and superiority in patient care. It is the only hospital in Monmouth and Ocean counties to consistently receive an “A” Hospital Safety Score by The Leapfrog Group, an independent national nonprofit organization, and most recently was recognized for a fourth time as a Leapfrog Top Teaching Hospital – one of just 73 in the nation and four in New Jersey to earn this honor. It is one of the 96 hospitals in the United States to be honored by the Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) with their Lantern Award, which recognizes emergency departments that demonstrate exceptional and innovative performance in leadership, practice, education, advocacy, and research, and in 2025, earned the Lantern Award for a second consecutive time. RWJBarnabas Health and Monmouth Medical Center, in partnership with Rutgers Cancer Institute — the state’s only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center — bring a world class team of researchers and specialists to fight alongside patients, providing close-to-home access to the latest treatment and clinical trials.

Founded in 2000 by large employers and other purchasers, The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization driving a movement for giant leaps forward in the quality and safety of American health care. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital Survey and new Leapfrog Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) Survey collect and transparently report hospital and ASC performance, empowering purchasers to find the highest-value care and giving consumers the lifesaving information they need to make informed decisions. The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, Leapfrog’s other main initiative, assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their record of patient safety, helping consumers protect themselves and their families from errors, injuries, accidents and infections.