A Florida nursing home begged for help and didn't get it, leading to the deaths of 11 seniors. Rick Scott decided those messages weren't important enough to keep.
September 24, 2017

Maybe its me, but this seemed like something that probably needed to be preserved for the investigation and any potential wrongful death lawsuits from this tragedy.

But Florida governor Rick Scott doesn't think it's important to keep evidence er, records available for future reference.

There were a total of four voicemails left during the 36 hours before the first patient died, and they would have been a critical piece of evidence in the ongoing investigation into the patient deaths.

Natasha Anderson, a vice president with The Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills, says she called the governor’s cellphone to say the nursing home needed “immediate assistance” in restoring the power to their air conditioning system.

Scott said at no time did anyone from the nursing home suggest there was a crisis or that patients were in danger.

In response to CBS4’s request for copies of the voicemails, a spokeswoman with the governor’s office, wrote in an email: “The voicemails were not retained because the information from each voicemail was collected by the Governor’s staff and given to the proper agency for handling.”

Scott has suspended the license of the nursing home in the wake of the deaths, saying that they never actually called 911.

But it may be worth examining the work of the governor's emergency response. And he made that much harder by deleting the calls.

How convenient.

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