Gray aims to end city contract with Florida brain rehab center
By: Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer
February 10, 2009
D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray is trying to stop the District from renewing a multimillion-dollar contract with a Florida brain injury clinic that has been the focus of hundreds of abuse and neglect allegations. Dozens of District residents have been sent to the Florida Institute for Neurologic Rehabilitation for years for treatment of their injuries. Nineteen currently live there.
The Wauchula, Fla.-based clinic has been the subject of abuse and neglect complaints for years, including a report from a congressionally appointed D.C. monitor that accused clinic officials of treating its D.C. wards “like garbage.” That hasn’t stopped the Fenty administration from proposing to pay the clinic $2.3 million this year. Seeing the proposed contract, Gray passed a bill extending the review period for the deal. In a Jan. 29 letter to Mayor Adrian Fenty obtained by The Examiner, he says he’s worried about the residents’ safety in Florida.
“Would you please provide details on what the executive has done to investigate these allegations of abuse and neglect, including [any] site visits to the facility?” Gray’s letter asks. “Are you confident that this provider is delivering safe and appropriate care and services to these ... District residents?”
Gray also says he doesn’t understand why the Florida clinic has not obtained Medicaid certification, which means District taxpayers have to pay 100 percent of the bills.
The Florida clinic claims to be one of the only places in the country that can treat severe brain damage.
Last year, Fenty gave the Florida clinic another contract without putting it up for a full council vote. Gray says he wants to know why it’s taken the Fenty administration two years to seek approval for the millions it’s paying to the clinic.
“These concerns must be addressed,” Gray’s letter states.
Attorney General Peter Nickles told The Examiner on Monday that he wants to get every D.C. resident out of the Florida clinic by Sept. 30. The money he’s proposing to pay this year will give “the time to get everyone out.”
“I don’t want them down there. It’s inappropriate, it’s costing us too much money,” Nickles said. But “it’s not as easy when you deal with the lawyers and the parents.”
Every city agency with responsibility for a patient in Florida has been ordered to come up with alternate placements, Nickles said.
A clinic official declined comment. A spokeswoman for the mayor did not respond to a request for comment.
The Florida institute is one of hundreds of costly, out-of-state clinics and schools where thousands of D.C.’s most vulnerable residents are sent for treatment. When congressionally appointed University Legal Services issued its report on the Florida clinic last May, it blasted city officials for ignoring conditions in the clinic and not following up on how D.C. wards were getting by. City officials didn’t begin monitoring the clinic until it was the subject of a special report by The Examiner, University Legal Services reported.
