Baptist South's New Patient Care Tower Opens Three Additional Floors
New Level II Newborn Intensive Care Unit Added to Services

Jacksonville, Florida, June 19, 2009 -- After much anticipation, three new floors of Baptist Medical Center South's eight-story, $85 million expansion will open on June 29, 2009. The additional floors will add 76 new patient beds, including a 14-bed Level II Newborn Intensive Care Unit (NICU) that is an extension of the neonatal intensive care program at Wolfson Children's Hospital.

This partnership between Baptist South and Wolfson Children's Hospital allows for more babies to be born at the Southside hospital with varying health needs. The combined NICUs total 62 Level II and Level III beds to serve the Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia region covered by Wolfson Children's Hospital, the area's only regional pediatric referral facility.

In addition to the new state-of-the-art NICU, the new patient tower at Baptist South includes an additional 10 labor/delivery/recovery/postpartum suites (bringing the total to 22), 48 acute care beds, and a new inpatient pharmacy and cardiology area. Four more intensive care beds are slated to open in the fall. Floors six, seven and eight of the new tower remained shelled and will be available for further expansion as patient need dictates.

The hospital will have 196 beds with the completion of this construction project, which is more than double the hospital's size since it opened in 2005 with 92 beds. The entire facility is paperless and filmless, using digital technology for everything from imaging studies to patient medical records.

"Our expansion brings us to a new level, not just in terms of size, but also in terms of care," explains Administrator Ron Robinson. "We are providing services indicative of a much larger medical center to our growing community. Being able to use electronic medical record (EMR) technology in a Level II newborn intensive care setting is especially exciting for the Wolfson Children's Hospital and Baptist South teams."

In addition to the new patient tower, a 1,052-space parking garage for physicians and staff opened in September 2008, which created additional surface level parking spaces for patients and families.

Additional construction projects are scheduled to be complete by the end of the year, including a new five-story, 100,000-square-foot medical office building. The new building will include physician offices, as well as an outpatient surgery center with two operating rooms and two endoscopy suites.