Death under guardian care exposes disregard for seniors
The death of an elderly Cocoa Beach man has exposed Florida’s inadequate oversight of professional guardians.
Steven Stryker’s death also is a reminder that, while the state sells itself as a retirement heaven, it’s anything but that for a segment of the state’s rapidly growing senior population.
Guardians can hold the power of life and death decisions over vulnerable people whom judges deem unable to manage their own affairs because of physical or mental disabilities.
And while this power should come with great accountability, professional guardians run their businesses largely unchecked by the state and the courts.
Stryker, 75, died at a Tampa hospital in May because doctors and nurses couldn’t offer him lifesaving treatments. That denial was authorized by his professional guardian, Rebecca Fierle.
Fierle filed a “do not resuscitate” order for Stryker without permission from Stryker, his family or the court. Four days before Stryker’s death, his daughter, Kim, filed a complaint with the court about Fierle, who refused to remove the DNR order. Kim Stryker’s complaint was forwarded to the Office of Public and Professional Guardians, a division of the Department of Elder Affairs, where it languished for days.
Stryker’s death eventually sparked an investigation by Okaloosa County Clerk of Circuit Court and Comptroller, part of the Clerks’ Statewide Investigations of Professional Guardians Alliance — months after he died. The original complaint regarding DNR orders came in May. Kim Stryker wasn’t interviewed until July.
Kim Stryker’s complaint against Fierle wasn’t the first to be ignored for a prolonged period by the state. Fierle was accused of lying about the medical care she provided for 71-year-old Connie Tibbetts in 2016. The complaint was not investigated until April 2019.
Therein lies the problem.
Kim Stryker’s complaint wasn’t about a guardian mismanaging his light bill. This was a matter of life and death.
This complaint should have been treated with the urgency it deserved. It warranted a swift halt to Fierle’s power from the courts until authorities could conduct a proper investigation. Instead, the investigation took place after his death.
The troubling questions about Fierle’s guardianships come three years after thenGov. Rick Scott signed a reform bill that established the OPPG office in 2016.
The law, which was designed to bring more monitoring over professional guardians, was created after the Sarasota HeraldTribune published an explosive, three-part investigative series about the corrupt practices of some unethical guardians in 2014. The Miami New Times also closely covered the largely unmonitored system in 2014.
And yet, five years later, a guardian filed numerous DNR orders without permission from clients in Orange County — and dozens more in counties across the state.
Ninth Circuit Judge Janet C. Thorpe made the unusual move to initiate removal proceedings over Fierle’s authority. But Fierle resigned from all of her cases before the legal process started and is facing a criminal investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Gov. Ron DeSantis promised to take action and directed the Department of Elder affairs to “vigorously” pursue the matter. Meanwhile, the agency is also looking to replace its guardianship executive director, Carol Berkowitz, who abruptly resigned in July.
On Wednesday, Department of Elder Affairs secretary Richard Prudom revealed that he asked Berkowitz to resign after learning about a significant backlog of complaints.
The department’s spokeswoman Ashley Chambers said in an email to the Sentinel that Prudom is working to revamp the system for how complaints are filed and prioritized along with changes to the investigation process.
It’s still unclear if this systematic failure was a result of poor management or a thin staff.
So why is this system failing vulnerable seniors even after policy was created to protect them?
Two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Orlando Sentinel said Berkowitz was frustrated by a lack of resources to fulfill the mission of her office. In addition to investigating complaints, the office is also charged with the responsibility for the registration and education of more than 550 private guardians. OPPG also has limited disciplinary authority over guardians.
Resources and funding is a legitimate concern, particularly in understaffed circuit courts like Orange and Osceola counties which have been begging for additional judges to process cases for a rapidly growing population.
Resources have also been a concern for the OPPG, which has received $150,000 since 2016 to conduct statewide investigations.
Florida’s senior population is growing, and with it the number of people who need help managing households and medical care. That’s creating a booming business for guardianship.
A representative for the Council on Aging of Volusia, which hires guardians for the county, said it had to turn away 63 people who wanted to be public guardians last year because there wasn’t enough money to pay them. A whopping 39% of the county is 55 or older, with 56,000 residents over 74 years old, according to the census.
Florida’s seniors don’t need another policy change from legislators. They need adequately staffed agencies and enough people sitting in benches and in Tallahassee to act on the urgent cries for help from vulnerable citizens.
Our elected officials have the power to shift more funding toward the department in 2020. And they need to act like someone’s life depends on it, because thousands of senior lives across Florida actually do.
Editorials are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board and are written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, Jay Reddick, David Whitley, Shannon Green and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.