Fighting state decisions to place a moratorium on patient admissions and suspend Medicaid funding, a Broward County nursing home plans to subpoena records from Florida Power & Light related to an air-conditioning outage that has been linked to the deaths of nursing-home residents, according to a court document filed this week.
The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills filed a lawsuit last week in Leon County circuit court challenging decisions by Gov. Rick Scott's administration to impose the admissions moratorium and suspend Medicaid payments. The administration's decisions came after eight residents of the nursing home died Sept. 13, three days after Hurricane Irma knocked out the facility's air conditioning. Three more residents died later.
In the court document filed Tuesday, the nursing home said it plans to subpoena a variety of records from FPL, which supplies electricity to the facility. As examples, the subpoena will seek records and communications pertaining to the nursing home. Also, it will seek records about communications between FPL and Scott's office and state agencies.
The lawsuit seeks injunctions against the moratorium and Medicaid suspension, which came in orders issued by the state Agency for Health Care Administration.
Meanwhile, the nursing home has filed a separate case at the 1st District Court of Appeal challenging the admissions moratorium. That case contends the Agency for Health Care Administration's moratorium order “lacks the required immediacy to demonstrate that only the emergency order can protect the public interest until normal due process is afforded and an administrative proceeding has been completed.
