The Florida state agencies charged with caring for medically fragile children have new measures in place to help keep the youngsters out of geriatric nursing homes.
Nurse care coordinators will be assigned to each child, and the frequency of medical reviews stepped up. Last fall the U.S. Justice Department accused the state of warehousing hundreds of children in nursing homes to save money.
Liz Dudek, secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration, Thursday said she'd toured one of the nursing homes the Justice Department criticized.
"I have to wonder what the Department of Justice was looking at when they went through there – and I would invite any of you to go to any of those facilities – because I certainly did not see what they were seeing."
Federal civil rights lawyers said state health administrators had slashed services to children that would allow their parents to care for them at home.