News

Clark & Daughtrey Medical Group, a large, well-known multi-specialty practice that has been independent for 65 years, credits uncertainty surrounding the future of health care for its decision to merge with Lakeland Regional Health System, the Lakeland Ledger reports.

When the cops arrested Jorge Castillo at his Miami Lakes home on Monday, they found he lived well, with two Maseratis, a Range Rover and a boat. Small wonder, as the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.  Prosecutors say Castillo, 43, bought pharmaceutical drugs for AIDS, cancer, psychosis and other conditions from criminals.

A Cape Coral toddler is dead, two weeks after a child-services contractor returned him to his mother and her boyfriend, and the Department of Children & Families is investigating. As the Miami Herald reports, the case is the third in recent weeks in which a child has died after intervention by investigators. (Editor’s note: Readers may encounter a paywall to read this article.)

Voters in Manatee County voted down a half-cent sales tax to provide health care to the poor, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports. The tax would have bolstered the Health Care Trust Fund, which has paid for care for years but is expected to run out in 2015 .

The whistleblower in the case against Biogenesis anti-aging clinic in Miami, accused of supplying steroids to Major League Baseball players, has come forward to express his disappointment with both MLB and the state Department of Health, Miami News Times reports. Porter Fischer says he supplied reams of documents to DOH investigators, but the agency closed the case against clinic owner Tony Bosch with just a citation and fine. Fischer says he is now in fear for his life. 

A national movement to find the uninsured and get them plugged into benefits under the Affordable Care Act kicked off Tuesday night at a house party  in Tampa.

The Harbour Island get-together, which attracted about 30 volunteers, was the first official event in the nation for Get Covered, America, organizers said. Other Get Covered events are scheduled for Wednesday in Phoenix, Ariz.,  and Austin, Texas. The official launch of the enrollment effort is Saturday.

Florida’s infant mortality rate has dropped to 6 per 1,000 live births, the Associated Press reports. In a separate story, the smoking rate for U.S. adults has dropped to 18 percent, after hovering around 20 percent for years, the AP reports.  

Owners of an optometry practice are suing two former employees, saying they copied the confidential information of 9,000 patients in hopes of luring them to their new practice, the Pensacola News Journal reports.  

Florida has ended its three-year investigation of "Lifestyle Lifts" with a settlement that could bring refunds to a few and an agreement by the company to cover the state's costs.

Gov. Rick Scott is touting a deal with Amazon to move 3,000 jobs to Florida, but some concerns are being raised about the quality of the jobs, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Other Amazon warehouses have been the subject of newspaper reports that the buildings lacked air-conditioning, that workers fainted from the heat, and that injuries went unreported.   

Toddlers usually are wary of prostheses, and the 2-year-old Pinellas child had been waiting for five hours. So when Ireland Nugent got the chance to try out her prosthetic legs, she forged ahead like a trouper, the Tampa Bay Times reported.

Criticism of the Department of Health is growing over its release of private prescription information on  3,300 patients to federal and state agencies, and from there to defense attorneys involved in a Volusia County drug case.

Researchers are alarmed by a massive uptick in death rates of dolphins, manatees and pelicans in the Indian River Lagoon on Florida’s east coast, the Tampa Bay Times reports. The ecosystem is one of the most diverse in the world, and scientists can’t say for sure what’s killing such a wide array of animals.
 

While the Affordable Care Act is still six months away from being fully implemented, employers are looking at healthcare by the numbers - namely 49 and 29, according to the Ocala Star Banner. (Editor’s note: Readers may encounter paywall.)

Accountable Care Organizations, new Medicare payment arrangements aimed at improving coordination of care for the chronically ill, are really taking off in Florida, according to MedPage Today. Florida has more ACOs than any other state, even the much more populous California.

A lawyer for the state Florida Department of Environmental Protection says he was unfairly fired, the Tampa Bay Times reports. Chris Byrd says it’s because he wasn’t towing the line set by deputy secretary Jeff Littlejohn -- whom he accuses of selectively enforcing rules and regulations.  

Although two Republican representatives from Manatee County revived hope that Medicaid expansion, or something similar, may not be dead in Florida, there’s still no sign of a special session where they could work out a deal. As the Tampa Bay Times reports, there’s been no change since lawmakers ended the session without expanding healthcare to more low-income Floridians.  

With a $3.6 million gift from a supremely successful alumnus, University of South Florida will launch a training program for medical residents who want to specialize in care of older patients, USF announced Friday in a press release.

The training program will be located in The Villages,  south of Ocala. USF Health is already conducting population-health studies in The Villages, the nation's largest retirement community.

(UPDATED) In a long-awaited move, federal health officials on Friday granted Florida's request to expand its five-county pilot Medicaid managed-care project statewide.  Mindful of how some Florida Medicaid HMOs have behaved in the past, the deal includes what an independent analyst called "unprecedented consumer protections."

Florida Managed Medical Assistance Program

Approval period: December 16, 2011, through June 30, 2014
Amended June 14, 2013

After E.coli bacteria were found in a test sample from a well field on Wednesday, the South Broward public water supply was declared unsafe and residents of the area were warned to avoid tap water, or to boil it before use.

Bottled water has long since disappeared from the shelves of stores, as the Sun-Sentinel reports, and warning signs are everywhere at the airport, hospitals and other public places.

As the Miami Heat were playing in a tight game, a crowd was watching the televised game from the patio deck at Shucker's Bar & Grill on the waterfront in Miami. Suddenly the wooden structure collapsed, spilling about 100 patrons into Biscayne Bay, as the NBC station in Miami reports.

Police said 24 people were injured, two seriously.

Palm Beach State College plans to cut the hours of nearly 1,000 employees to avoid paying for health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act.  The move affects 895 adjunct faculty members and more than 100 other part-time employees, the Palm Beach Post reports.

Health Management Associates Inc., a Naples-based hospital chain that owns about two dozen hospitals in Florida, announced it has hired high-profile advisers in an attempt to prevent a hostile takeover by its largest shareholder.

Earlier this year, both Govs. Jan Brewer of Arizona and Rick Scott of Florida surprised political pundits by coming out in support of Medicaid expansion. Both Republican governors had been fierce critics of the Affordable Care Act, but they said they favored the expansion because it would hurt the people of their state to turn down federal funds.

But the outcomes were quite different. Brewer muscled it through the Arizona Legislature, winning victory on Thursday after months of uncertainty and bare-knuckle politics. 

In the latest installment of their series on the nation's worst charities, the Tampa Bay Times and Center for Investigative Reporting describe the second-worst: the Cancer Fund and affiliated money-raising organizations operated by the extended family of James T. Reynolds Sr. of Tennessee.

The 80 vials of antivenin it has taken to save 11-year-old Ben Smith from an eastern diamondback rattlesnake bite will produce one heck of a big bill, the Ocala Star-Banner Reports.

UF Health Shands Hospital can buy the only FDA-approved antivenin, CroFab, for about $2,200 a vial. But the hospital charges patients close to 10 times that for each vial. It’s unclear whether the family has insurance. 

Two recent child deaths may be linked to mental illness and substance abuse that child protection agencies overlooked.

In one case, a 23-year-old South Florida woman has been sent for psychiatric evaluation after her arrest on suspicion of suffocating her young son. The woman had had contact with police in the past when she had episodes of what appeared to be a serious mental illness, the Miami Herald reports.

Police are investigating the death of Suyima Torres, 28, whose family says she suffered respiratory arrest hours after receiving an injection to enlarge her derriere at a beauty clinic in West Dade, Miami New Times reports. Authorities are trying to identify a Venezuelan man who they suspect pretended to be a doctor at the clinic , which is licensed only for massages, not medical procedures.  Police say he may have left the country; they say  they could get little inform