Tag Archives: Tampa Bay Times

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Tampa Bay Times: Bayfront Health St. Petersburg ramps up efforts to collect patient debt

By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times

Ileana Brenes had been feeling dizzy at the St. Petersburg nursing home where she worked. She was pale and tired all the time.

“My doctor called me with my blood results and told me to go to the hospital right away,” said Brenes, 54, a nursing assistant. She went to Bayfront Health St. Petersburg, where doctors gave her a blood transfusion and prescribed medication to raise her iron levels.

At the time, in 2016, Brenes didn’t have insurance. So she met with an administrator at the hospital and filled out paperwork to get help with the cost. She said she knew Bayfront Health was a “safety net” hospital in the region, meaning doctors there would still treat her regardless of her ability to pay.

What she didn’t expect was the lawsuit Bayfront later filed against her for nearly $3,000, including court fees. “I think there was a miscommunication,” she said, “because I did everything they told me to, but still had to go to court.”

Brenes is one of hundreds of patients who have been sued by Bayfront Health St. Petersburg in recent years as the hospital evolved from a nonprofit institution to a for-profit arm of a national chain. The number of patients sued individually in Pinellas County civil and small claims court has risen from about 500 in 2015 to more than 730 so far this year, putting the hospital on pace to double that number by the end of 2019, a Tampa Bay Times analysis shows.

The increase represents a stark change from past practice. In 2012, when Bayfront was still a non-profit, the hospital filed hundreds of small claims cases against patients’ insurance companies, not the patients themselves. That continued in 2013 and 2014 as the hospital quickly changed hands to one corporate chain, then another.

Read more here.

Related coverage to Bayfront Health:

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Tampa Bay Times: Why is flesh-eating bacteria on the rise? Some point to climate change.

By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times

If it seems like you’re seeing more reports about flesh-eating bacteria, you actually are. The number of cases is up, though only slightly. And scientists have begun pointing to an increasingly familiar cause: climate change.

The trend will likely continue because of steadily warming temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which provide a “breeding ground” for the bacteria, said Dr. Sally Alrabaa, an an infectious disease specialist with USF Health and Tampa General Hospital.

“It’s by no means an epidemic but we are seeing more cases this year,” she said. “As the water is getting warmer by a few degrees the bacteria is flourishing for longer periods.”

Necrotizing fasciitis, the infection’s formal name, isn’t caused by the same bacteria found in the blue-green algae or red tide blooms that Florida has seen recently. “But the two are closely related,” Alrabaa said. “The bacteria that affects us has had a lot of food to ‘eat’ thanks to red tide, which has killed fish and marine animals. That’s a lot of organic material for it to feast on.”

Explaining it doesn’t make the situation any less concerning. Several recent reports from Tampa Bay and other parts of Florida have rattled a population that regularly comes into contact with the water. Among the cases: A 77-year-old Ellenton woman who scraped her leg in the waters off Anna Maria Island, got the infection and died; an Ohio man who spent 11 days in the hospital and nearly lost a foot after being infected near Weedon Island; another man who hooked his hand and caught the infection while fishing in the gulf off the Pinellas County coast around Easter.

Read more here.

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Tampa Bay Times: Debt, lawsuits, big spending led to the death of Laser Spine Institute

By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times

TAMPA — The Laser Spine Institute may have closed its doors suddenly in March, but repercussions from the surgery center’s business practices continue to reverberate in the courts.

Two local lawsuits provide the clearest picture yet of the forces that led the Tampa company to shut down, resulting in the loss of some 500 jobs. Documents detail a years-long legal battle among three business partners, a penchant for paying large executive salaries and bonuses, and a struggle against mounting debt.

Another factor: ego. At one point, two of the founders dared their partner to sue them, telling him the company was making so much money it wouldn’t matter. When the partner called their bluff, his lawsuit ended up being a decisive blow that helped put Laser Spine in the grave.

That case came to a head June 30, when a judge in Hillsborough County Circuit Court awarded Joe Samuel Bailey $260 million in damages, capping what had been a 13-year battle between Bailey and Laser Spine founders, Dr. James St. Louis and Dr. Michael Perry.

Bailey accused them of breach of fiduciary duty, defamation, slander, violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, conspiracy and tortious interference.

Following two long bench trials and appeals, he now assumes a majority share in the remains of Laser Spine, which is undergoing an insolvency process. Similar to a federal bankruptcy filing, the process assesses all equipment and other materials Laser Spine owned or controlled and decides what is valuable enough to sell.

Read more here.

*Read more of my Laser Spine coverage here and here.

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Tampa Bay Times: Measles cases are on the rise, but some Tampa Bay parents won’t vaccinate their kids

By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times

DUNEDIN — England Miano greeted every woman who walked into the Escape Root Juicery with open arms, wrapping each in a warm hug.

Some of the faces she had seen only on Facebook. Others, fellow parents, she’d known for some time.

Miano, 40, was hosting a meetup for people like her who challenge traditional health norms, like vaccinating their kids.

A mother of three who lives and works in north Pinellas County, Miano chose not to vaccinate her youngest after dealing with developmental issues with her second child. She believes vaccinations are the reason her son, Davis, has autism.

At the juicery, she and other Tampa Bay area moms gathered around plush chairs and colorful couches, sharing stories and self-care tips over lattes, veggie smoothies and organic champagne. Among the topics: CBD oil, yoga, whole foods and activated charcoal.

Miano and her guests are part of a small but increasingly vocal slice of the U.S. population who distrust doctors and federal health agencies, and who often base their positions on misinformation from fringe sources.

The medical community has sounded alarms. But so too have tech companies like Amazon and Instagram, which are trying to keep false information from spreading on their platforms.

Miano sees this resistance and works to push past it.

“Before Facebook started censoring so much, it’s where we shared a lot of facts and information,” she says. “Now our posts get deleted all the time. It’s so time-consuming to do the research. It’s not easy. But they don’t want it to be shared.”

At the same time, vaccine-preventable diseases are mounting a comeback.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reporting the largest number of measles cases nationally in 25 years. New York, Washington and Texas are seeing outbreaks.

Florida investigated 15 measles cases in 2018, up from the previous five years, when fewer than 10 cases was the norm.

Pinellas County reported three cases in unvaccinated adults last year — the first the county has seen in 20 years. And last month, researchers identified Hillsborough as the 17th most at-risk county in the nation for a measles outbreak.

Some doctors fear they’ll never be able to convince people like Miano and her friends that vaccines are safe and effective.

The mindset is similar to that of Joshua McAdams and Taylor Bland-Ball, the Tampa couple who recently ended chemotherapy for their 3-year-old son, Noah, in favor of alternative remedies, only to have a Hillsborough County judge order last month that the treatment resume.

“It’s hard to compete with these personal stories that people share on social media, and what parents see in front of their own eyes with their own children,” said Dr. Rebecca Plant, a pediatrician at Tampa General Hospital and an assistant professor with USF Health. “The latter is going to carry a lot heavier of a weight in their own hearts and minds than if I can sit there and spout all the numbers and recent publications.”

The conversation at Miano’s meetup turns to all the backlash they get, not only from doctors, but from neighbors and Facebook friends as well.

“I make suggestions that I think can help their children, who just look so sickly all the time, and they are so defensive,” one woman says. “I wish them no harm. I just want to help them.”

Another compares the reaction to how Nazis treated Jews: “We’re the most hated people in America right now.”

Read more here.

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Tampa Bay Times: If smoking is bad, how can smoking medical marijuana be good? We asked doctors.

While smoking medical marijuana is touted for its health benefits, smoking still comes with risks. Doctors say they look forward to seeing more research on the subject as more states allow marijuana in smokeable form. [Shutterstock]

By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times

When Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature made it legal last month to smoke medical marijuana, they did it in the name of better health — the idea that thousands of Floridians would gain relief from a variety of illnesses.

Yet it seemed to run counter to everything modern medicine says about smoking. Isn’t it really bad for you?

Physicians say yes: Smoking anything, be it tobacco or cannabis, comes with some risk. But the answer is more complicated.

The Florida Department of Health — the agency in charge of implementing and enforcing the rules for Florida’s burgeoning medical marijuana industry — still has to come up with guidelines for licensed cannabis companies to follow for selling smokable “flower,” or the actual granules of the plant. As part of those guidelines, patients will have to sign consent forms outlining the risk associated with smoking.

“With tobacco cigarettes, the concern is nicotine, which is not found in marijuana products,” said Dr. Cary Pigman, an emergency room physician with AdventHealth in Sebring and a Republican state representative from Avon Park.

“What I am concerned about with marijuana, as a physician, is the combustion of plant products, which is basically the inhalation of ash,” Pigman said.

Read more here.