Advocates for nursing home residents are seeking an investigation of Florida Governor Rick Scott in the wake of the resignation of the state's nursing home ombudsman, who claims he was forced out by the governor at the behest of the nursing home industry.
If an investigation is undertaken by federal authorities, Scott could be found to have violated both federal and state law, both of which prohibit "executive interference" in the ombudsman program, according to an article in Saturday's Orlando Sentinel
Follow below the fold for details.
The latest scandal surrounding our new governor involves the apparent forced resignation of Brian Lee, Florida's top advocate for residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
For those unfamilair with this office (as I was before this story broke), here are some details from The Sentinel:
Under the federal Older Americans Act, first passed in 1965, each state must have a long-term-care ombudsman program separate from the agency that licenses the facilities. In Florida, Lee, a $78,000-a-year state employee, led a largely volunteer army of about 400 ombudsmen throughout the state. Their job, according to federal law, is to identify, investigate and resolve residents' complaints.
By all accounts, Lee and his volunteers were very effective at their jobs:
"The nursing home wouldn't even return our calls until we got the ombudsman involved," said Karen Mummey of St. Cloud, whose 71-year-old mother fell and broke her hip in a nursing home after being left unattended in a bathroom. Mummey said the facility's staff also failed to awaken her mother for meals and were often too busy "texting on their phones" to do their jobs.
"But when the ombudsman comes in there, they all stand up and pay attention," Mummey said. "It's the only advocate we have."
Both the federal law and the state's implementing legislation expressly prohibit "executive interference" with the ombudsman's duties, as well as "retaliation or reprisals" for any actions taken by the ombudsman. But according to Lee, that's exactly what happened.
"It was like, 'Oh, man, Scott is our guy — and now we'll be able to get him [Lee] out of there," Lee said. "When the governor's transition team came to our department, half the group was made up of nursing-home providers. So right there, in December, we knew where this was going."
Despite that concern, Lee continued to do his job. In late January, he sent out a letter to all 677 nursing homes in the state advising them of the need under the new health care reform law to submit their corporate ownership records to his office.
That requirement was written into the new legislation to prevent nursing home operators from shielding themselves from lawsuits by breaking their companies up into smaller entities.
"It shouldn't have been a problem," Lee said, "except that the industry doesn't want that information out there. They're really crafty. What they do is separate out all their corporate information and have these individual little limited-liability companies that hold all their interests."
If a facility is sued, Lee said, it is not only protected by state caps on liability, but it also is able to close down the targeted company and continue business under the name of another.
Unknown to Lee, Gov. Scott had received a letter on Jan. 18 from the Florida Assisted Living Association, a trade group which represents more than 700 assisted living facilities in the state, seeking to have Robert Emling, a Miami field-office manager for the state's Agency for Health Care Administration, appointed to the ombudsman's post which had been held by Lee.
Lee calls that "complete interference with the program" — an assertion echoed by other advocates. But the Assisted Living Association's executive director, Patricia Lange, said the group never called for Lee's ouster. The letter itself makes no mention of Lee.
"That's not a position we could take," Lange said. "We had actually been contacted by this individual — Mr. Emling — who told us he was interested in the position. We met with him, and we simply supported his effort to apply for the job."
So, to sum up:
The state's chief advocate for nursing home residents is told to resign by the governor after he (the governor) receives a letter from representatives of the industry the ombudsman oversees naming a guy they would rather see doing the job. Not that the industry was actually seeking to have the current ombudsman replaced, you see, but just in case the position happened to come open sometime in the future.
Right.
Nursing home patients' advocates have made a formal request to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the federal Administration on Aging asking that the matter be investigated. And while no formal investigation seems underway as yet, the watchdog groups say they have received verbal assurances from the feds that this will be looked into.
It's probably too much to hope that Rick Scott will be indicted over this... it seems more likely that he will be forced to give Lee his job back and promise not to interfere with the performance of his duties in the future.
But here's the thing. Florida currently has no provision to recall state officials, and although a bill to create such a procedure is going to be introduced during the legislative session which begins in March, I doubt it will pass the Republican-led legislature with enough votes to overcome Scott's almost certain veto.
Likewise, I doubt there are enough votes in the legislature to impeach Scott, even though he has already rankled many members of his own party, and seems likely to continue doing so.
Florida's best hope for getting rid of this guy before he can do too much damage, then, is indictment. And given the heavy-handed way he has governed in the less than two months he's already been in office, and the total ignorance of and contempt for the laws governing the way he is to do his job, that seems the most likely outcome of the Rick Scott era in Florida government.
Here's one more bit of good news: Florida does at least have a few good newspapers who take their job as guardians of the public interest seriously. Chief among those is the St. Petersburg Times, one of the last bastions of independent journalism left in the country, and the newspaper which broke the stories that got former House Speaker Ray Sansom indicted and exposed the corrupt budgeting practices which got a "Taj Mahal" courthouse built in Tallahassee.
We shall see what comes of this... stay tuned.