Baptist Health (Jacksonville) is a faith-based, non-profit health system comprising 6 hospitals with 1,168 beds, a cancer center, four satellite emergency departments and more than 200 patient access points of care, including 50 primary care offices located throughout northeast Florida and southeast Georgia.

Baptist Memorial Hospital was established in 1947 when the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, based in Nashville, Tennessee, responded via telegram to the critical shortage of hospital beds identified by community leaders in Jacksonville, Florida.

[5] That telegram, sent to the pastor of the Southside Baptist Church in Jacksonville, announced that the convention had authorized the establishment of a new, faith-based community hospital.

[8] Accreditation is required for hospitals to receive payment from federally funded Medicare and Medicaid programs.

[9][10] A 28-bed medical-surgical unit was established on the fifth floor at Baptist Memorial in early 1957, bringing the total capacity at that time to 202 beds.

[8] Baptist Memorial expanded its services with the Charles Judson Williams Cancer Treatment Center within the hospital on March 2, 1972.

[11] The cancer treatment center was dedicated to the late Mr. Williams, a Jacksonville businessman, and a philanthropist who died in 1956.

[13] That was followed a year later by the opening of the Wolfson Family Medical Tower, bringing the total bed count for Baptist facilities in Jacksonville to 579.

[14] Baptist Memorial added to its array of medical specialties in 1974 with the opening of a Gastroenterology Lab to focus on digestive system disorders.

[16] “Today, the hospital is an eight-building institution containing the equipment, facilities, and modalities necessary to care for more than 20,000 patients a year,” said Richard H. Malone, executive director of the Medical Center at the time, as quoted in the Florida Times-Union newspaper.

[17] Further expansion of Baptist Medical Center in 1977 included the establishment of an oncology service for the treatment of cancer and related diseases.

[18] Cancer-related care such as diagnostics, medical, surgical, radiation, and rehabilitation oncology already existed within the Baptist hospital system.

[20] Life Flight's genesis was Malone's vision, which began back in the 1970s, when he worked with the US Department of Transportation to start an air-ambulance service.

[23] The governor of Florida at the time, Bob Graham, appeared at BMC for ceremonies on September 9 to officially turn the switch on for the new power plant.

[29] In 2006, Lyerly Neurosurgery, Florida's first neurosurgical practice, dating to 1934, affiliated with Baptist Health to form Baptist Lyerly Neurosurgery, offering a full range of neurosurgical services for the brain, spinal column and nervous system.

[31] Baptist Health earned its first “Magnet” designation in 2007 for the quality of nursing care throughout its five-hospital system.

[33] In 2015, electrophysiologists with Baptist Heart Specialists were the first in Florida to implant the world's smallest wireless pacemaker.

In an era of medical research where new cancer drugs are increasingly being developed, local access to such advances, such as in the Jacksonville area, was considered critical.

[43][44] Baptist Health named Michael A. Mayo CEO in June 2021 after serving in an interim capacity.

[47] Situated on the St. Johns River waterfront in Downtown Jacksonville, the 498-bed Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville is part of a large medical complex which also includes the adjacent Wolfson Children's Hospital and Baptist MD Anderson Cancer Center.

It also provides training for physicians in the Jacksonville campus of the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine.