Brooks Rehabilitation: Celebrating 50 Years of Excellence

Jan 20, 2020 Health Articles Last Updated: October 30, 2024

Brooks Rehabilitation is celebrating 50 years of caring in 2020. Throughout the year, we’ll be sharing 50 Stories for 50 Years. These will include our history, patient stories, employee highlights and recaps of the many ways we’ve grown through the years to better serve our communities. Through five decades of rehabilitation, we have been privileged to assist millions of people achieve their highest level of recovery and participation in life.

We are celebrating our 50th anniversary at Brooks Rehabilitation throughout 2020.
It’s been five amazing decades of growth and service to Jacksonville and the North East Florida region. Brooks has treated and improved the lives of thousands of patients from across the world.

From the beginning, our mission has been to link the best minds in rehabilitation with the latest technology, giving our patients their best chance to achieve the highest quality of life possible..

It began with the vision of our founder, J. Brooks Brown, MD, who saw a need for more hospital beds in Jacksonville and filled that need by founding Memorial Hospital. The hospital and the region it serves grew together over the next 50 years.

By the time Dr. Brown retired and current President and CEO Doug Baer took over in 2002, Brooks Rehabilitation was well-established as one of the leading healthcare organizations in the country and a cornerstone of physical and cognitive rehabilitation in the Florida communities it serves.

Brooks Rehabilitation’s many recent milestones have included:

Announcing the development of an additional, state-of-the-art 60-bed inpatient rehabilitation hospital in the southern region of Jacksonville which will open in 2022.
Receiving the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation “Quality of Life” Grant, which benefits the Adaptive Sports and Recreation and Pediatric Recreation programs.
Opening Helen’s House, a hospitality house offering temporary lodging to Brooks patients and their families.

Today, Brooks Rehabilitation consists of more than 60 outpatient, inpatient, skilled nursing, assisted living and memory care, home health, and research locations across 23 counties throughout North Florida.

Celebrate with us by scrolling through our interactive Brooks Rehabilitation history timeline, a stroll through our celebrated past – and the foundation for a great half-century ahead!