Baptist Hospital and Lakeview are creating a Central Receiving System to deal with Baker Act patients. Baptist will handle children up to 18 years old. Lakeview will deal with adults.
Dig Deeper
Grove explained, “At Baptist, because we operate the only licensed inpatient child and adolescent beds, we don’t want kids to have to move if they’re already in such crisis. It doesn’t mean that everybody who comes through has a child needs inpatient care, but if they do want to move them again and that Lakeview that would operate the adult side of the central receiving facility.”
Lakeview is part of the LifeView Group. The Lakeview is developing its adult facility from scratch and needs time to equip and staff it, according to LifeView Group CEO Allison Hill.
Budget
The money is in the budget, and Baptist and Lakeview hope it escapes Gov. Ron DeSantis’ line-item veto.
While he wasn’t given credit, State Rep. Alex Andrade handled the Baptist Hospital side of the budget request. Last year’s budget only had $19.8 for central receiving facilities statewide. Andrade and Sen. Broxson beefed up that item to $51 million to be split between 10 specific judicial circuits to ensure Baptist got the amount it needed and should be veto-proof.
According to the budget, Lakeview is set to receive $2.15 million for a short-term residential treatment expansion. The item lists SF 3096 – which Sen. Broxson submitted.