VERO BEACH — More than 1,000 Medicare patients were impacted by a decision by a health maintenance organization this month to end its affiliation with a local clinic, which has offices in Indian River and St. Lucie counties.

Quality Health Plans, of Tampa, which is contracted to offer a Medicare Advantage Plan through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has terminated its contract with University Medical Clinics as of June 30.

The company “felt that this was necessary due to multitude of reasons; abrupt closures of UMC clinics thus affecting patient care and accessibility, UMC threatening patient abandonment, inability of UMC to maintain financial solvency,” according to an e-mail sent Monday from Quality Health Care.
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Since March, Leroy Stennett has spent more than 10 hours talking to seven people in five departments at Bank of America about getting his mortgage modified.

In 2006, Stennett and his wife purchased a house in Port St. Lucie for $285,000, putting $95,000 down and adding another $5,000 in closing costs from the sale of their previous home.

“My house is worth $120,000 now, so, I’ve basically paid it off, but they don’t want to cut me a break,” Stennett said about his lender, Bank of America. “Every time I call, I talk to a different person, so I can’t get any real answers.”

Like thousands on the Treasure Coast, Stennett hoped President Barack Obama’s Making Home Affordable plan would help adjust his house payments after applying for a mortgage modification. But frustrated homeowners, who remain current on mortgage payments despite economic setbacks, say they are confused about the modification process and aren’t getting support or cooperation from their lenders. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — Cindy Robbins, once president and chief operating officer of Riverside National Bank of Florida, was let go Thursday as the financial institution continues its restructuring.

Robbins’ position had been eliminated and no agreement could be reached with her taking another position at the independent bank based in Fort Pierce, said Riverside Executive Vice President Alan Polackwich.

“We just had one person impacted, it was nothing widespread, nobody else was involved,” Polackwich said.

Robbins could not be reached for comment.

Robbins had been reassigned as senior executive vice president and director of retail banking in January, when a bank reorganization cut 35 positions and Vernon D. Smith, who founded the bank in 1982, announced his retirement. She had been president and COO since 2006.

The bank has 65 offices in 10 Florida counties.

Recently listed by analysts as a problem institution, Riverside continues to work under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program.

The FDIC program was created to strengthen confidence and encourage liquidity — the ability to convert an asset into cash quickly — in the banking system.
Jim Turner, TCPalm.com

VERO BEACH — Piper Aircraft Inc. is getting a new top executive. The Vero Beach-based plane maker announced Wednesday that James Bass, its president and chief executive officer since 2005, will resign on June 26.

Kevin Gould, Piper’s vice president of operations, will take over as CEO. John Becker, a 20-year Piper veteran and vice president of engineering, will become president.

Bass said his goal when he took the helm at Piper was to turn around the then-struggling company and make it attractive to a buyer. The Asian investment firm Imprimis bought the plane maker in April.

“I have successfully completed my mission at Piper and am leaving the company in very capable hands,” Bass said in a statement. “What I was brought in to do has been done, and it is now time for me to move on to other challenges.”

MARTIN COUNTY — When Martin Memorial Medical Center hired a jet in 2003 to repatriate a brain-damaged patient to his native Guatemala, hospital officials “never took the law into their own hands,” according to documents filed ahead of a June 23 trial.

“They never stuffed Mr. (Luis Alberto) Jimenez in the back of a van under the cover of darkness and drove him out of town,” Martin Memorial attorney Scott Michaud stated in papers detailing Jimenez’s predawn flight to Guatemala City on July 10, 2003.

“When Martin Memorial discharged Jimenez to the facility in Guatemala,” Michaud noted, “Martin Memorial did so with the honest belief based on the evidence it uncovered, that the hospital in Guatemala was properly equipped to care for him.”
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WASHINGTON — Former Port St. Lucie and Fort Pierce police chief Gil Kerlikowske received Senate approval Thursday as the national drug czar.

Kerlikowske, a 36-year law enforcement veteran who has been the chief of Seattle Police since 2000, has said he will take a balanced, science-based approach to the job of director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The position is commonly known as the drug czar.

The Senate approved his nomination, 9-1-1.
Fort Pierce Police Chief Sean Baldwin, who joined the local force a month after the city hired Kerlikowske in 1990, was pleased to hear of the confirmation.

“It’s nice to see a chief who has dealt with local problems, local drug problems, local issues in a community, now in charge in Washington, D.C,” Baldwin said. “It’s reassuring to know that the man who is serving as the drug czar has real experience with the problems that local law enforcement officers go through on the street.”

Kerlikowske could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Baldwin called Kerlikowske, who has a record of alternative-policing strategies and youth intervention programs, “an extremely progressive guy.”

The 59-year-old Kerlikowske said he will help develop a strategy to address drug-related violence along the Mexican border. While he and other officials would work to reduce the international drug supply, the biggest contribution the United States can make is to reduce demand for illicit drugs, Kerlikowske said. (more…)

VERO BEACH — Piper Aircraft Inc. has been sold to an international investment firm for an undisclosed price.

The Vero Beach-based plane maker announced today that Imprimis purchased 100 stake in the company from American Capital Ltd. (Nasdaq: ACAS).

“Imprimis intends to invest significant capital in Piper’s current operations to strengthen its position in its traditional markets and support the development of key new products such as the PiperJet,” Piper said in a statement.

Imprimis, which operates from offices in Bangkok, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam, is committed to keeping Piper’s headquarters in Vero Beach, the company said. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — Not much will change Friday when Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute begins serving as a provisional state trauma center.

Much of the $15 million Lawnwood invested in five trauma surgeons, staff training, new equipment and emergency department renovations was earmarked two years ago when hospital officials proposed St. Lucie County taxpayers chip in $7 million a year to pay for the regional, Level II trauma center.

Trauma tax opponents said then Lawnwood’s parent company, Tennessee-based HCA Inc., would find the cash if it really wanted to care for trauma patients. Nearly 75 percent of voters rejected the trauma tax.
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STUART — Martin County’s lowest-paid workers will keep fighting the county’s furlough program because they can’t afford a 5 percent pay cut, a union leader said Tuesday.

Teamsters Local 769, which represents 275 of the county’s clerical and blue collar workers, will ask the Public Employees Relations Commission to resolve the contract dispute through binding arbitration, said Mavis Curley, the union’s chief steward in Martin County.

The furlough program requiring all county employees, except fire rescue workers, to take one unpaid day off per month starting Friday violates the Teamsters contract, Curley said. Under the contract, a workweek is 40 hours.
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Port St. Lucie’s next biotech institute is one step closer to reality.

Oregon Health & Science University’s Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute signed a deal this month to design and build its new $30 million laboratory in the Tradition development west of Interstate 95.

The institute tapped Baltimore-based Whiting Turner Contracting Co. to oversee construction of the 105,000 square feet of laboratories and offices. The building is on target to be completed in May 2011, said Andrew Favata, vice president for Tradition’s developer, Core Communities LLC.

VGTI Florida, as the local campus has been dubbed, will be built on eight acres at Core Communities’ Florida Center for Innovation at Tradition, a fledgling research park that’s now home to another biotech outfit, the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies. (more…)