Zufall Health, the community health center in West Orange for tens of thousands of residents across Essex County — more than half of them uninsured — is moving to a new home.
The new three-story building — costing around $10 million and celebrating a ribbon-cutting on Thursday — is a far cry from co-founder Robert Zufall’s first office in a cramped strip mall a half mile down the street.
“A single room,” Zufall said of the old building. “You could put the patient on the other side of the curtain.”
Zufall said he expects a nearly 50% increase in patients in the new building’s first year of operation.
Michael O’Donnell, chair of the Zufall Health’s board of directors, said in the old center’s first year seven years ago, “we did 1,900 patients and 5,000 visits. This year we’ve had … 5,000 patients, and 17,000 visits.”
