JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — For over 30 years, Wolfson Children’s Hospital and Nemours Children’s Health have operated as a lifeline for Florida families. Starting March 1, that partnership is growing stronger to ensure local children never have to travel far for medical care.
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The expanded partnership aims to create a “one-stop shop” for families by adding eight inpatient and ambulatory specialties:
- Neonatology and newborn nursery services in Wolfson Children’s Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) and Baptist Health’s Labor & Delivery units
- Critical Care Medicine in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU)
- Neurosurgery
- Infectious Diseases
- Rheumatology
- Nephrology
- Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
For patients like Ryleigh Walker, who was rushed into open-heart surgery at birth due to a rare heart defect when she was born, the collaboration is quite literally life-saving.
“They’re keeping Ryleigh alive, so we appreciate that,” said her father, Craig Walker.
As Jacksonville’s population surges, the demand for specialized pediatric care has increased. To meet this need, Nemours Children’s Health is bringing in approximately 60 physicians and 70 practice providers to bolster the expansion in services positions they started looking for over 9 months ago.
“This allows us to provide much more of a seamless care from the inpatient and outpatient environments and keep kids’ care local,” explained Aaron Carpenter, North Florida President for Nemours Children’s Health. As they know, the partnership will remain for years to come.
While the scale of service is increasing, leadership emphasizes that the patient experience will remain familiar. Allegra C. Jaros, President of Wolfson Children’s Hospital, noted that families won’t see a disruption in care—only an increase in options.
“Our patients now have more choice,” Jaros said. “They will have more services to access within the Nemours center.”
The expansion officially kicks off next month.
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