Nursing home where 12 died loses license

The nursing home where 12 people died because of a lack of air conditioning after Hurricane Irma will lose its license.

Moving forward with an administrative law judge’s recommendation, the state Agency for Health Care Administration issued a final 17-page order Friday to revoke the license of The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills.

Gov. Rick Scott’s administration in 2017 moved to revoke the license, but the nursing home challenged the decision in the state Division of Administrative Hearings.

Judge Mary Li Creasy on Nov. 30 issued a recommended order that supported the revocation. But under administrative law, the issue had to go back to Scott’s Agency for Health Care Administration for a final order.

The dispute stemmed from the September 2017 hurricane, which knocked out the nursing home’s airconditioning system for three days.

Authorities have attributed as many as 12 deaths to sweltering conditions at the facility, though Creasy wrote that “clear and convincing evidence” was presented during the case that nine of the 12 residents “suffered greatly from the exposure to unsafe heat in the facility.”

The deaths and evacuation of the nursing home drew national attention in the days after Hurricane Irma, which made landfall Sept. 10, 2017, in Monroe and Collier counties and caused damage through much of the state.

The nursing home lost power to its air-conditioning system, Creasy wrote, because a fuse to a transformer on a power pole was dislodged.