Nemours Children’s Health Jacksonville unveils new medical suite to better treat the city’s youth
On Tuesday, a new medical suite at Nemours Children’s Health Jacksonville had its grand opening.
The new suite is geared toward helping children in Northeast and Central Florida with serious diseases and deadly illnesses. Action News Jax was there for the heartfelt ribbon cutting.
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The Eckstein Family Infusion Suite is one of many state-of-the-art facilities inside Nemours that is a part of THE PLAYERS Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders.
It’s an $11 million medical project between Nemours and Wolfson Children’s Hospital designed to make patient treatment easier and faster for kids going through cancer and blood disorders.
“We’re going to have a team room and an infusion center and the clinic space all on one floor,” Nemours’ Vice President and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Gary Josephson said.
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Before, sick children in Jacksonville would have to be tested at Nemours and treated for illnesses like leukemia up the street at Wolfson. But now, it’s all in one location.
“It improves the experience because they come up and their whole care team is there, physicians, nurses, social workers,” Josephson said.
The new Eckstein Family Infusion Suite is 12,000 square feet completed with a total of 8 beds, 5 infusion bays, 3 private isolation rooms for immunocompromised patients, a medication room, and a treatment room.
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There are also waiting rooms and play areas, a parental lounge, and specialized rooms for in-person consults, education, telehealth consultations, psychology testing, and therapy.
This was all made possible through a Nemours campaign called Hand-in-Hand, which is a capital campaign the hospital has been working on since 2019. Help also came from numerous donations from volunteers, locals, and a famous golf tournament, THE PLAYERS Championship. Nemours credits THE PLAYERS for kickstarting the funding with a donation of $2 million.
THE PLAYERS Executive Director Lee Smith said it was an honor.
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“THE PLAYERS Championship is a week in March but what’s important to us is making sure that THE PLAYERS Championship has an impact on the North Florida community year-round. This is a great example of that,” Smith said.
“We see about 100-150 newly diagnosed cancer patients a year. This new unit is twice the size of the current unit that we have,” Josephson said.
The suite will begin taking patients on June 26.
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