STUART — More than a century ago, shipwrecked sailors who washed up on the Treasure Coast immediately looked for mile markers nailed to trees and posts to direct them to safety.

These markers were designed to be easily understood by men from every country and education level. Over time they were lost to history, but replicas are currently on display at the House of Refuge at Gilbert’s Bar. (more…)

PORT ST. LUCIE — A lock on the door was the only notice Jessica Rufo got that Hayes World Day Care & Learning Center had closed.

Rufo, a St. Lucie County School District employee, is keeping her 3-year-old daughter at home for the summer, but had left Hayes World about $500 to hold a spot for Elizabeth in the fall. Driving by the Darwin Boulevard center this weekend, Rufo noticed locks on the door.

A message on Hayes World’s phone service said the day-care center is “temporarily closed,” but offered no other information.
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FORT PIERCE — A 14-year-old boy who police say fled from officers, brandished a gun and barricaded himself inside a home Monday afternoon surrendered after a few hours, officials said.

Patrick Casimir of 1105 North 29th Street was arrested just before 5 p.m. after he walked out of the house in the 3000 block of Avenue L with his hands raised, according to Sgt. Dennis McWilliams. No one was injured, and no shots were fired.

Casimir was charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, armed burglary and two counts of resisting arrest without violence, officials said.
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New Medicare payment rules are starting to strangle local small oxygen suppliers by forcing them to turn away business.

In the process, patients who live here part-time, travel, move or want to switch suppliers locally are left struggling to find new options for oxygen.

“This is going to dramatically affect patients’ lifestyles, how they move and their freedom,” said Mark Hassett, general manager of Stuart-based OxyPros Inc., which also has a Port St. Lucie office “Patients need to speak up.”

In the new rules for 2009, Medicare pays suppliers about $164 monthly for three years for patients renting respiratory equipment. In the following two years, suppliers continue providing oxygen and services, but only receive negligible reimbursement. After the fifth year, the payment cycle begins again and patients are entitled to new equipment.

Now, it’s become a losing proposition, suppliers said, to take a patient who has been on oxygen even for a year or two, because two years of providing essentially free oxygen and services follow.

And close to three full years is necessary to cover the costs of the impending two-year period with little reimbursement, said Kathie Rovella of Oxygen Plus in Vero Beach.

So suppliers are often forced to reject patients who are a few years into their oxygen use. Oxygen Plus has turned away 12-15 patients this year because of the new billing cycle, including two in the last week, Rovella said.

Because much of Florida’s population doesn’t live in the state year-round that can make it difficult because patients have to find a supplier in two locations. And patients a few years into the cycle who move are often left confused and without coverage.

Travel cane be even more difficult.

Patients either have to lug their equipment around with them, or search diligently for willing suppliers wherever they are going, Rovella said.

The rule is part of a large-scale effort to cut Medicare costs and eliminate fraud in the oxygen industry, which long lacked sufficient regulation, said Zane Morgan, a manufacturers representative for several Florida oxygen suppliers.

Dorothy McGrath is approaching four years using oxygen. She decided that carrying her 30-pound concentrator to Kentucky to see her daughter last month was unreasonable.

So McGrath, of Hobe Sound, rented from a local supplier, and was handed a $150 bill, which OxyPros luckily paid for her.

Because McGrath was in the middle of her third year, the Kentucky supplier wouldn’t accept her Medicare.

“You’re really bound to your house, and that’s not fair,” said McGrath, 63.

Patients like McGrath, who travel, move across the state, live seasonally up North, or look to move closer to family simply are getting turned away, Hassett said.

Meanwhile, the loss in customers and reimbursement could be debilitating for small suppliers in the long run.

Medicare reimbursement hardly accounts for labor costs, like providing 24/7 on-call services, and equipment set-up, maintenance and refills, which in reality are the prime expenses for suppliers, Hassett said.

OxyPros and Oxygen Plus have both added smaller health-care items to their inventories to help make up for profit losses. And OxyPros is in a hiring freeze, while Oxygen Plus staff members have taken pay cuts.

But neither company is confident small suppliers will be able to continue the same services without a large-scale change.

“Oxygen Plus is a mom-and-pop store,” Rovella said. “And trust me, we won’t be able to sustain this much longer.”

In the end, however, it’s the patients like those who come in for portable oxygen so they can move and be active who suffer — and who become confined to one area in an effort to be mobile.

“They’re not thinking about the person’s life,” McGrath said. “It’s important when you’re disabled to be near your friends and family.

“Everybody has to breathe.”

OXYGEN BREAKDOWN

In years one to three, suppliers receive an average of $200 per month – 80 percent from Medicare, and a 20 percent copay from the patient or secondary insurer – for renting, installing and maintaining rented oxygen equipment

In years four and five, Medicare offers minimal reimbursement to oxygen suppliers, who are required to continue offering the same equipment and services

After five years, the payment cycle restarts, and patients are entitled to new equipment

By Jonathan Mattise, TCPalm.com

VERO BEACH — Schoolmates of one of two teenagers accused of making bomb threats to Vero Beach High School have been writing letters of support for the accused.

Taren Lee Stage, 17, of the 1100 block of 39th Avenue Southwest was arrested in late April on charges of making six false bomb reports to the high school. The threats repeatedly forced evacuation of hundreds of students and staff during school hours from March to April.

The investigation is continuing.
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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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VERO BEACH — The private defense attorney for Indian River County Administrator Joe Baird said Thursday he plans to enter a not-guilty plea to the driving while intoxicated charge Baird was arrested on Saturday night in Vero Beach.

Baird was driving from a Youth Guidance Volunteer Program fundraiser near Wabasso and “many people who saw him there say they don’t believe he was impaired at all,” said attorney Bobby Guttridge. “They spoke with him and interacted with him.”

Vero Beach Police allege Baird was speeding — doing 43 mph in a 30 mph zone — in his private car and crossed a centerline before an officer stopped him at 10:26 p.m. on 21st Street, according to police reports.
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PORT ST. LUCIE — Cheers, tears and roses were on display before a standing-room-only crowd in the auditorium of Port St. Lucie Elementary Monday night.

The gathering was to say goodbye to the 34-year-old school that is being closed in June as part of the school district’s plan to save $30 million next year.

“We have always been a family,” said Deb Mock, a reading coach who has taught at the school 31 years. “We’ve been there for each other through all the challenges we’ve had — hurricanes, flooding, the deaths of faculty members. We always strived to do the best for our students,” she added.
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STUART — A constitutional challenge is prompting the Martin County commissioners to rethink a strict noise ordinance they enacted in February to crack down on loud music at bars and other businesses.

Deanna Kernan, the owner of the Martin Downs Sports Resort in Palm City, and Susan Masterson, the resort’s manager, have asked a county judge to declare the noise ordinance unconstitutional because it is “overbroad.”

Kernan, 42, of Palm City, and Masterson, 39, of Stuart, also have asked Judge Stewart Hershey to dismiss the misdemeanor charge they violated the county’s noise ordinance because music from the resort could be heard more than 150 feet away. (more…)