RWJBarnabas Health, headquartered in West Orange, lists “Retirement Plans” on its careers benefits page without describing them. Its audited statements do say that its one pension is closed and frozen, and that it runs several savings plans. This page sets out what is known and how to read your own documents. For the rules that apply at every hospital, start with the Healthcare professionals page.
On this page
What is known
What the public record shows
- One pension, frozen. The RWJ Barnabas Health Retirement Income Plan is “a single noncontributory defined-benefit plan,” “closed to new entrants and is currently frozen to future benefit accruals,” according to the fiscal 2025 audited statements.
- Several savings plans. The same statements say the system “maintains multiple defined-contribution retirement plans,” without naming them.
- Executive plans. There are “several supplemental executive retirement plans for certain key individuals.”
- A 401(k) with a match. RWJBarnabas job postings advertise a “401(k) retirement plan with an employer match.” The formula is not published.
If you have a frozen pension
A frozen pension stops growing, but what you earned before the freeze stays yours. If you worked at Saint Barnabas, Robert Wood Johnson or another hospital now in the system, ask for a statement of your accrued benefit, the payment forms available and whether a lump sum is offered. The pension decisions page covers how to compare them.
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Your own documents
Which savings plan you are in changes your New Jersey tax
New Jersey does not tax 401(k) contributions when you make them. It does tax 403(b) and 457 contributions in the year you make them, and later taxes only the amount above them. If you have money in more than one kind of plan from earlier employers in the system, the plan name on each statement decides how New Jersey treats it. Keep those statements.
Trinitas
Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth became a member of RWJBarnabas in January 2022, with Catholic oversight from the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth. Before it joined, it had its own plan, the Trinitas Savings and Retirement Plan, open to full-time employees after one year of service and age 21, with an annual employer contribution at the option of its Board of Trustees. Whether its staff have since moved into the system’s plans is not published. Ask, and read the church plan rule on the Healthcare professionals page.
How to get the actual documents
The plan document, not a benefits summary, is what governs. The Atlantic Health page sets out how to request it in writing and which five provisions to look up first. The same steps apply here.
Sources for this page: RWJBarnabas Health, audited consolidated financial statements for fiscal 2025, 2024 and 2022; RWJBarnabas Health careers, Benefits, and a current job posting; RWJBarnabas Health, Trinitas Regional Medical Center joins RWJBarnabas Health (January 2022); Trinitas Regional Medical Center, audited financial statements for 2021; New Jersey Division of Taxation, NJ Income Tax Wages, and GIT-1 and 2 (January 2026). No RWJBarnabas plan summary was found on its websites, so this page states only what its own filings and postings say. It is general information, not advice about your situation.
Several of these choices come with deadlines.
With RWJBarnabas, the answers are in documents you have to request, and several choices at retirement have deadlines. We can go through yours in a short conversation, at no charge and with no obligation.
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