Baptist Health Employees Support Their Community Through Volunteer Work

Caring and compassion are the hallmark qualities of Baptist Health employees — both within and outside the hospitals’ walls.

Hundreds of employees have participated in a wide variety of volunteer projects in recent months to make their community stronger, healthier and better.

Besides collecting food and toys to benefit thousands of local needy families and raising more than $250,000 for various charities, last fall Baptist Health employees completed 18 service-day projects affecting almost 25,000 people.

“This is part of our core mission, to support our community not only in healthcare but in all ways,” said Baptist Health President and CEO Brian E. Keeley.

Among those projects was the repainting of Patches, a “prescribed pediatric extended care center” in Homestead that provides daytime services to medically fragile children so that their parents can work.

The center, which operates on a very tight budget, had no funds to make it more cheerful and welcoming. “This is a godsend for us,” said Patches founder Kyle Smith, R.N.

She noted that Baptist Health also replaced all of the center’s cribs to comply with the latest standards. “They have supported us in so many ways,” she said.

Andrew Seaman, R.N., a nurse in the Homestead Hospital Emergency Center, has participated in many service days in his 16 years with Baptist Health, and he is always gratified to see
how many of his fellow employees are willing to volunteer their time. “That’s what I love about Baptist Health,” Mr. Seaman said. “They say they serve the community, and they do.”

Homestead Hospital Vice President Corey Gold, the organizer of the Patches project, explained it simply: “This is our community, too.”