Gerold L. Schiebler Children’s Medical Services Center celebrates $4 million expansion

In Florida, the name Gerold L. Schiebler, M.D., is synonymous with commitment to quality medical care for all children, and the connection grew stronger as the University of Florida celebrated completion of a $4 million expansion and renovation project to the Children’s Medical Services center in Gainesville that bears his name.

Building A of the Gerold L. Schiebler Children’s Medical Services Center boasts a newly expanded primary-care clinic and an additional floor that houses the Maternal and Child Health and Education Research and Data Center, which provides statewide billing, data management and population research for Medicaid and other programs, said Arlan Rosenbloom, M.D., medical director of the 16-county Gainesville-Ocala CMS area office.

The project, completed in May, added 15,000 square feet to the building and doubled its clinical space, Rosenbloom said. It also remediated problems associated with water leakage in parts of the building. The CMS area office serves more than 6,700 North Florida children and provides more than 16,000 patients visits per year, contracting with UF’s Health Science Center for the services of more than 100 physicians and additional ancillary personnel.

“With the added space, we now are able to expand our ability to process and handle data of importance to children throughout the state,” he said. “And with the increasing need for primary care, the clinic expansion was really crucial. We were bursting our seams before.”

Funding for the project was provided by the state Department of Health and the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.

On Sept. 29, a rededication ceremony for the building featured a virtual who’s who of UF pediatric faculty as speakers, including Rosenbloom, distinguished service professor emeritus of the department of pediatrics; Schiebler, chairman emeritus of the department; Douglas J. Barrett, M.D., vice president for health affairs and a professor and past chairman of pediatrics; and Terence R. Flotte, M.D., Nemours Eminent Scholar, professor and chairman of pediatrics. College of Medicine Dean C. Craig Tisher, M.D., and state Deputy Secretary for Children’s Medical Services S. Elizabeth Ford, M.D., also spoke.

“It was a lovely ceremony and appropriately recognized Dr. Schiebler’s phenomenal contribution,” Rosenbloom said. “It gave people a chance to meet our new deputy secretary, Dr. Ford, and gave her the opportunity to appreciate our interdependence with Shands and the University of Florida.”

CMS is a statewide program that coordinates and funds health care for underinsured or uninsured children with special health-care needs, Rosenbloom said. It developed from an earlier state program that addressed orthopedic conditions, and was greatly expanded in the 1970s and ’80s, largely through the efforts of Schiebler and a handful of other children’s health advocates.

“Virtually everything that’s happened to Children’s Medical Services has been with UF leadership and the ability of Gerold Schiebler in particular to garner statewide support and strengthen pediatric programs not just at the University of Florida but throughout the state,” Rosenbloom said. “That’s been our strength and our inspiration.”