Judge sides with nursing home in records fight

For the second time, a Tallahassee judge has sided with an embattled nursing home in a public-records dispute with the Florida Department of Health, saying the agency did not comply with his order to turn over death certificates from across the state.

Lawyers for The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, which incurred the wrath of Gov. Rick Scott after elderly residents died following Hurricane Irma last year, asked Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis to hold the department in contempt in a legal tangle over copies of death certificates.

Lewis in April ordered the Department of Health to hand over the documents, but lawyers for the nursing home later accused the state of dragging its feet in producing the records. The nursing home also challenged costs that the department wanted to impose for the public documents.

In part, the nursing home objected to a May 7 invoice from the department for $5,928, including $5,907 for “review & redaction” of about 6,000 death-certificate records. The Broward County nursing home contended that there is not a need for the agency to review and redact information from the death certificates, a process that the invoice indicated would require 492.25 hours.

Tim Elliott, a lawyer representing the nursing home, told Lewis on Tuesday that the health department is refusing to comply with the judge’s order to produce the records and instead is “going through a lengthy, timeconsuming process of redacting 17 fields of information on each death certificate.”

Under Florida law, all of the information except the cause of death is available to anyone who requests a death certificate, Elliott said. “The information that we need, that’s critical, that they’re deleting, includes the residence of the persons who died,” Elliott told the judge. “Without that, the records are useless.”

Florida law also limits state agencies to charging “reasonable” fees to produce records, Elliott said.

“I say as a matter of law the $6,000 cannot be reasonable, given that we’re entitled to it without all that redaction,” he said.

Lewis has not entered a formal order in the case yet, but the state could be required to turn over the documents within 48 hours, unless the health department appeals.

The nursing home has faced intense scrutiny — and a state move to revoke its license — after residents died following Hurricane Irma.