Florida governor under fire over missing nursing home voicemails after hurricane – By John Bowden (thehill.com) / Sept 23 2017
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) is facing heavy criticism after his office revealed that four voicemails sent from a nursing home where eight residents died during Hurricane Irma were deleted from his personal cell phone.
CBS Miami reported on Saturday that Scott’s office says the four voicemails, which were all received during a 36-hour period before the first resident died, were handed off to the appropriate agency and then deleted.
The contents of the four messages would be crucial in the investigation into the deaths at The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, a nursing home in the state where eight residents died after the facility lost power and air conditioning. Authorities said the deaths were heat-related.
“The voicemails were not retained because the information from each voicemail was collected by the Governor’s staff and given to the proper agency for handling,” the governor’s office told CBS in a statement.
A vice president at The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills told CBS that she requested “immediate assistance” for the residents at the nursing home.
Last week, Scott’s office denied that the nursing home ever indicated its residents were in immediate danger, and stressed that the calls were referred to the appropriate authorities.
“Every call made to the governor from facility management was referred to the Agency for Health Care Administration and the Florida Department of Health and quickly returned,” Scott’s spokesman said last week in a statement to the CBS affiliate.
Florida’s Department of Health has laid blame for the deaths squarely on the nursing home.
“Let’s be clear – this facility is located across the street from one of Florida’s largest hospitals, which never lost power and had fully operating facilities,” DOH spokeswoman Mara Gambineri said. “It is 100 percent the responsibility of health care professionals to preserve life by acting in the best interest of the health and well-being of their patients.”
PB/TK – Let’s stop passing the potato. Yes the nursing facility is #1 culprit in the deaths however if a Gov got 4 “serious voicemails” for help and staff just passed that info to another dept, which more than likely was overwhelmed by the situation, don’t ya think someone would’ve remembered these phone calls when the reports started to flow in and began to make phone calls. The excuse of “well there was power across the street” doesn’t hold water.
