With $3M gift from Players Village, Wolfson to build new mental health unit (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — Wolfson Children’s Hospital will build a new inpatient behavioral health unit, doubling the number of patients who can be treated at the site.
Construction of the facility, which will be on the third floor of the Southbank hospital, is being funded in part by a $3 million donation from The Players Championship Village, a nonprofit associated with the golf tournament.
The facility is scheduled to open in about a year, adding 20 beds in the space that had been occupied by the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, which relocated to the Borowy Family Children’s Critical Care Tower in 2022.
The hospital also has a 14-bed unit and an eight-bed pod devoted to behavioral health, with the hospital providing inpatient and partial hospitalization behavioral health services as well as outpatient consultation, evaluation and treatment for children and adolescents.
This $3 million gift is the first from The Players Championship Village Inc. but the third from the tournament, which provided a $1 million gift in 2011 and a $2 million gift in 2016 to benefit child health, wellness and injury prevention programming.
“The Players Championship Village has a long history of ensuring that young people in our community have the right foundation for success,” said Mike Hartley, a member of the organization’s board. “This partnership with Baptist Health and Wolfson Children’s Hospital will have a life-changing impact for children and adolescents in need of critical behavioral health services.”
Pediatric ER visits related to mental health are expected to grow by 9% over the next five years, with inpatient stays jumping by 11%, Wolfson Children’s Hospital President Allegra C. Jaros said.
“Like communities across the nation, Northeast Florida has been challenged to match limited mental health resources for children and adolescents with the overwhelming demand for this specialized type of care,” she said. “As a primary provider of inpatient pediatric mental health services, Wolfson Children’s Hospital has long worked with like-minded community organizations on creative solutions to fill gaps in services where we can to support struggling families, with more to come.”
Photo courtesy of Wolfson Children’s Hospital