from the News Service of Florida
An administrative law judge will consider whether the Florida Department of Health properly decided in February to shut down a Clay County trauma center.
Orange Park Medical Center’s challenge to the closure was sent last week to the state Division of Administrative Hearings, records show.
The Orange Park facility, which is affiliated with the HCA health care chain, has been part of a broader hospital-industry fight during the past two years about the approval of new trauma centers.
The Department of Health in late 2011 allowed Orange Park and other HCA hospitals to open trauma centers, amid legal opposition from hospitals in the Jacksonville and Tampa Bay areas that already operated trauma facilities.
But early this year, as the Orange Park trauma center sought a more permanent status, the Department of Health ordered that it close because of what the agency described as “deficiencies.”
Orange Park asked the Department of Health in March for a formal hearing to fight the closure, and the case was sent to the Division of Administrative Hearings last Friday.
The hospital’s petition says the department closure decision had “no basis in the trauma statute or DOH’s own administrative rules.”