AtlantiCare is marking the 25th anniversary of the opening of its flagship surgery center, which took place April 9, 1997, in its Health Park in Egg Harbor Township.

Staff celebrated the silver anniversary by presenting every patient with a silver-ribbon-wrapped carnation to thank them for choosing AtlantiCare.

The center’s team performed 657 outpatient procedures in its first year. As of April 9, 2022, the team had performed 276,714 procedures. AtlantiCare opened surgery centers in its Cape May Court House Health Park in 2009 and in Little Egg Harbor in 2014. It opened the Center for Orthopaedic Surgery in 2020 in the Egg Harbor Township Health Park. As of April 9, 2022, AtlantiCare’s surgery centers had performed 350,757 procedures combined.

“The exceptional teamwork of our providers and staff has led us to exceed national customer service and quality standards,” Dr. Richard Zalman said. Zalman has been with the center since 1999. “Because of the vast experience of our clinical team, we safely offer more than 4,000 diagnostic and treatment procedures.”

“Many of us intuitively knew that health care would be moving to settings outside of the hospital,” Dr. Francis Previti, president, ASCs, said. He was among the planning team that opened the center and also performed the first surgery at the site. “We anticipated the outpatient diagnostic and treatment procedures our community would need and created the building and program around those needs. We’ve developed best practices, through our flagship center and additional sites, that we’ve shared with ambulatory surgery centers across the country.”