Owner of Deadly Hollywood Nursing Home Is Opening a Miami Charter School

[mia]

After 12 elderly patients died during Hurricane Irma at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills in Hollywood last September, South Floridians were not stunned to learn that the doctor who owned the facility, Jack Michel, had a history of fraud complaints. As WPLG's Bob Norman noted last November, nothing stopped Michel — who owns the Larkin Community Hospital network — from opening a nursing home after previously paying a $15.4 million federal fine to settle Medicare and Medicaid fraud claims in 2007. Since then, several Larkin doctors also have been criminally charged with fraud....

Then came Hurricane Irma. In a story that made national headlines, the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills — a 141-patient nursing home facility that Larkin owns in Broward County — infamously lost the use of its air-conditioning unit during the storm and turned into a 99-degree oven where 12 elderly residents eventually died of heat exposure.

Once reporters began looking into the facility, they found what sounded like a horror story: According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, state regulators who reviewed patients' medical records found that four out of five residents living on the building's second floor had suffered from dehydration, as did nearly half of the 71 patients on the bottom floor. The Miami Herald later obtained video of the conditions inside the facility before the storm hit: The clip showed elderly patients lying nude inside the building. Family members have repeatedly questioned why the facility did not call 911 in time to save the patients' lives....

Michel and Larkin now want to transition into educating kids. Florida's charter schools operate with infamously little oversight: A 2011 Miami Herald investigative series noted that the half-billion-dollar charter-school industry in Florida is run by for-profit management companies and private landlords and is "rife with insider deals and potential conflicts of interest." The Herald uncovered cases where cash-strapped schools taught children inside tool sheds, shuffled money around in bizarre shell-game schemes to make it appear financially solvent, and used illegal tactics and hidden fees to suck extra money out of students. In 2015, the state enacted stricter requirements on prospective charter-school operators, but critics say enforcement is still far too lax across the state....

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/deadly-irma-nursing-home-owner-opening-miami-charter-school-10494864

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@jmichelmd

New public middle school opening in #Miami, #Florida, in August 2018. Applications are now being accepted for grades 6 and 7. Online enrollment applications and additional information are available at our town hall meeting and at http://www.larkinmiddleschool.org