Martin Memorial Health Systems can build an 80-bed hospital in Tradition, a state administrative law judge has ruled.

The ruling, released late Friday by Judge J.D. Parrish, puts Martin Memorial a step closer to building a hospital to serve the communities in sprawling western St. Lucie County.

“We’re very excited about the news,” said Mark Robitaille, Martin Memorial’s president and chief executive officer. “It’s been a long journey to get to this point.”

Martin Memorial received permission from the state two years ago to build a hospital in Tradition. Hospital officials argued that it was needed because of St. Lucie’s rapid growth and the distance from western communities to the county’s existing hospitals, Lawnwood Regional Medical Center & Heart Institute in Fort Pierce and St. Lucie Medical Center in eastern Port St. Lucie. (more…)

Opinion Zone Sound off on this story Editorial The illegal vs. the hospital

STUART - By the summer of 2003, Martin Memorial Medical Center patient Luis Alberto Jimenez spent his days lounging by the nurse’s station on the fourth floor, eager to talk to passers-by and tell them how he missed the wife, kids and family he had back in Guatemala.

He refused to use the bathroom on his own, saying he would only do so when he went back to Guatemala. He told nurses he was sad and wanted to go home. Angry outbursts led doctors to put him on medication to control his behavior.

It was for these reasons, Martin Memorial attorney Scott Michaud told a jury Tuesday, that hospital officials devised a plan to send the undocumented immigrant back to his homeland more than three years after he suffered severe brain injuries and broken bones in a car accident.

But William King, an attorney for Jimenez’s legal guardian who subsequently sued the hospital, told the jury that hospital officials forcibly removed Jimenez from the country to shirk mounting costs they had to bear with little reimbursement.

“Martin Memorial’s actions were carried out through a thorough series of calculated decisions made at the highest level,” King said, later adding: “They tried to make an end run around immigration laws.”

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When Martin County Commissioner Ed Ciampi ran for office about a year ago he heard one question over and over again: Do you want to build the Indian Street Bridge?

Ciampi, a supporter of the proposed bridge, always said yes, but with a mental shrug.

“I kind of felt, ‘Why are we talking about this? It’s never going to happen,’ ” he said.

That changed this year when a state legislative commission earmarked it for $128 million in federal stimulus dollars and the White House later reviewed the project and said it could move forward with the stimulus money. Now the construction of what some have called Florida’s Bridge to Nowhere seems imminent.

What does this mean for Martin County?

The answer, in classic Martin County fashion, depends on your stance on growth. That’s because the county is a community often polarized by questions of development, and perhaps no other road project has been as divisive as the Indian Street Bridge.

The bridge, which would provide a second span across the South Fork of the St. Lucie River between Palm City and Stuart, has been planned for decades. And it has been argued about for just as long.

Supporters of the project, which include four of five county commissioners, say the second bridge will alleviate traffic congestion in and out of Palm City, provide faster access to Martin Memorial Medical Center in Stuart, and ease economic pain in the region by creating more than 3,500 jobs during its estimated three-year construction.

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STUART - Jury selection began Monday in the civil trial on behalf of a Guatemalan immigrant deported by a Martin County hospital after he racked up more than $1.5 million in medical bills.
Luis Alberto Jimenez sustained severe brain injuries in 2000 when the car he was riding in collided head-on with a stolen van driven by a drunken driver. He was taken to Martin Memorial Medical Center in Stuart, then to a nursing home months later.
Jimenez returned to the hospital for more treatment in January 2001, but when hospital officials tried to discharge him a second time, no nursing homes or facilities in the area would take him.

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STUART — Chief Circuit Judge William Roby has removed himself from an upcoming trial pitting the guardian of a brain-damaged Guatemalan native against Martin Memorial Medical Center over his 2003 deportation after having lived at the hospital’s acute care unit for two years.
Roby ordered his disqualification to preside over the civil kidnapping and false imprisonment case after Luis Alberto Jimenez’ cousin, Montejo Gaspar Montejo of Indiantown, filed court papers Thursday noting that Roby once worked for the Stuart law firm that had assisted Martin Memorial gain a court order allowing the hospital to fly Jimenez back to Guatemala.
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