Baptist Health
Encyclopedia
Baptist Health, based in Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...

, is a network of five hospitals, affiliated with 34 primary care offices located throughout Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia. All Baptist Hospitals have the MAGNET designation, the highest honor a health care organization can receive for excellence in patient care.

History

For more than 50 years, Baptist Health has provided residents of Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia with care. The original Baptist Memorial Hospital in downtown Jacksonville was opened in the 1940s, and is the flagship hospital for Baptist Health.

Merger

During the 1990s, for-profit health maintenance organization
Health maintenance organization
A health maintenance organization is an organization that provides managed care for health insurance contracts in the United States as a liaison with health care providers...

s such as Columbia/HCA
Hospital Corporation of America
Hospital Corporation of America is the largest private operator of health care facilities in the world, It is based in Nashville, Tennessee and is widely considered to be the single largest factor in making that city a hotspot for healthcare enterprise.-History:The founders of HCA include Jack C....

 captured a large share from non-profit hospitals.
Baptist Health merged with rival St. Vincent's HealthCare in 1995 to become the dominant healthcare provider in northeast Florida and control rising costs. Baptist/St. Vincents Health System had a 40% market share and had cut operating costs by $100 million in three years. However, the marriage didn't last, and both groups went their separate ways in 2000.

Baptist Downtown

In the early 1990s the hospital's name was changed to Baptist Medical Center Downtown. The facility is a tertiary referral hospital
Tertiary referral hospital
A tertiary hospital, tertiary referral center or tertiary care center is a term without a formal definition which in the United States generally refers to:...

 in downtown Jacksonville on the south bank of the St. Johns River
St. Johns River
The St. Johns River is the longest river in the U.S. state of Florida and its most significant for commercial and recreational use. At long, it winds through or borders twelve counties, three of which are the state's largest. The drop in elevation from the headwaters to the mouth is less than ;...

 next to Interstate 95
Interstate 95
Interstate 95 is the main highway on the East Coast of the United States, running parallel to the Atlantic Ocean from Maine to Florida and serving some of the most populated urban areas in the country, including Boston, Providence, New Haven, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore,...

. Baptist Downtown provides services in cardiology
Cardiology
Cardiology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the heart . The field includes diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart defects, coronary artery disease, heart failure, valvular heart disease and electrophysiology...

, oncology
Oncology
Oncology is a branch of medicine that deals with cancer...

 (including gynecological), women's health (including obstetrics
Obstetrics
Obstetrics is the medical specialty dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts and their children during pregnancy , childbirth and the postnatal period...

, gynecology and a Women's Resource Center), orthopedics
Orthopedics
Orthopedics is the study of the musculoskeletal system. The Greek word 'ortho' means straight or correct and 'pedics' comes from the Greek 'pais' meaning children. For many centuries, orthopedists have been involved in the treatment of crippled children...

, pediatrics
Pediatrics
Pediatrics or paediatrics is the branch of medicine that deals with the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents. A medical practitioner who specializes in this area is known as a pediatrician or paediatrician...

, ophthalmology
Ophthalmology
Ophthalmology is the branch of medicine that deals with the anatomy, physiology and diseases of the eye. An ophthalmologist is a specialist in medical and surgical eye problems...

, emergency care (including Life Flights air ambulance
Air ambulance
An air ambulance is an aircraft used for emergency medical assistance in situations where either a traditional ambulance cannot reach the scene easily or quickly enough, or the patient needs to be transported over a distance or terrain that makes air transportation the most practical transport....

, a children's emergency center and hyperbaric medicine), intensive care medicine
Intensive care medicine
Intensive-care medicine or critical-care medicine is a branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis and management of life threatening conditions requiring sophisticated organ support and invasive monitoring.- Overview :...

, bloodless surgery
Bloodless surgery
Bloodless surgery is a term that was popularized at the beginning of the 20th century by the practice of an internationally famous orthopedic surgeon, Adolf Lorenz, who was known as "the bloodless surgeon of Vienna." This expression reflected Lorenz's methods for treating patients with noninvasive...

, pulmonary services (including an adult/pediatric sleep disorders lab), pastoral care
Pastoral care
Pastoral care is the ministry of care and counseling provided by pastors, chaplains and other religious leaders to members of their church or congregation, or to persons of all faiths and none within institutional settings. This can range anywhere from home visitation to formal counseling provided...

, radiology
Radiology
Radiology is a medical specialty that employs the use of imaging to both diagnose and treat disease visualized within the human body. Radiologists use an array of imaging technologies to diagnose or treat diseases...

, rehabilitation
Occupational therapy
Occupational therapy is a discipline that aims to promote health by enabling people to perform meaningful and purposeful activities. Occupational therapists work with individuals who suffer from a mentally, physically, developmentally, and/or emotionally disabling condition by utilizing treatments...

 and psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...

/psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

. They also have the following regional referral centers: Jacksonville Orthopedic Institute (located in the Reid Medical Building) and Baptist Cancer Institute (located in the Edna Williams Cancer Center).

Baptist Nassau

A full-service hospital opened in Fernandina
Fernandina Beach, Florida
Fernandina Beach is a city in Nassau County in the state of Florida in the United States of America and on Amelia Island. It is a part of Greater Jacksonville and is among Florida's northernmost cities. The area was first inhabited by the Timucuan Indian tribe...

 in 1942, relocating in the 1970s to Lime and South 18th Streets. In 1994, it was acquired by Baptist Health. The hospital converted to an electronic medical record system, one of a handful of community hospitals in the nation to do so.

Wolfson Children’s Hospital

Morris David Wolfson (father of Louis Wolfson
Louis Wolfson
Louis Elwood Wolfson was a Wall Street financier and one of the first modern corporate raiders, labeled by Time Magazine as such in a 1956 article...

), made a $500,000 donation in 1946 to create a children’s health care facility in Jacksonville. The facility opened in 1955 as a wing in the Baptist Memorial Hospital with 50 beds and gradually grew to the point that the decision was made in 1971 to consolidate the services into a separate facility with the name, Wolfson Children’s Hospital (WCH). The University of Florida
University of Florida
The University of Florida is an American public land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant research university located on a campus in Gainesville, Florida. The university traces its historical origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its present Gainesville campus since September 1906...

College of Medicine-Jacksonville Pediatric Residency Program uses the hospital as its main pediatric teaching facility.

Baptist Beaches

Beaches Hospital originally opened in Jacksonville Beach in 1961, but when it could not keep up with expanding needs, it was replaced by the First coast Medical Center in November 1988. In 1990, Baptist Health bought the tax-supported facility and changed its name to Baptist Medical Center Beaches. They have continued expanding the hospital, including adding additional floors, wings and buildings and making available new services, such as maternity care.

Baptist South

To meet the expanding needs of southern Duval and St. Johns counties, Baptist South was constructed and opened in February 2005. In June 2007, began the construction of a patient care tower that will further increase its patient capacity, including a new Newborn Intensive Care Unit

Foundation

In 1985, the Baptist Health Foundation was created to assist Baptist Health’s commitment to care by assisting in fundraising.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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