ORANGE PARK, Fla. — Nurse registries are businesses that provide nurses to care for elderly or disabled clients in their own homes.
They do background screenings, arrange schedules, pay nurses, and accept payments.
But the I-Team has learned if something goes wrong, the companies aren’t liable under Florida law.
“We felt like they had the resources”
“I had a spinal cord injury from a jet ski accident in 2002,” said Christy Corum of Orange Park, FL.
She says that injury left her paralyzed from the chest down.
“I've always had to be dependent on people since my injury. And you want to be able to know that you can trust the people that are there to help you,” Christy said.
Christy and her family hired a nurse from River City Home Health to help her with daily living tasks.
“We were told about this company and them being an agency, we felt that they had the resources, they had the people,” said Kenneth Corum, Christy’s father.
The company is categorized by the Florida Department of Health as a Licensed Nurse Registry.
Those types of companies refer nurses to clients, arrange their schedules, and pay the nurses.
Medicaid compensated River City Home Health for Christy’s care.
But she no longer uses the company after a terrifying incident in January.
“I have anxiety coming out of the van,” Christy said.
According to a lawsuit, Christy's nurse left her unattended after driving her home from a doctor’s appointment.
“She unstrapped me from the van and then had walked away inside,” Christy said. “The ramp did not deploy, and I drove straight out. Falling face first with my chair on top of me.”
Christy called her dad, Kenneth, who rushed from a construction project he was working on across town.
“First thing when I pulled up, I seen the wheelchair still laying on the ground outside,” Kenneth said.
He said the wheelchair weighs about 400 pounds.
Dragged 102 feet with a blanket
A civil complaint says the nurse failed to provide reasonable rescue care or alert authorities after Christy fell.
A handwritten report from the nurse said, “Christy was laughing a lot. Says she couldn’t believe she had done that without looking first.”
“You have a nurse there, so that if there is a medical event, you got help that is licensed qualified care,” said attorney Billy Gower, who is representing Christy.
Instead, the nurse got a blanket from the patio.
“I put the blanket under Christy and pulled her in the house,” the nurse wrote.
According to the complaint, the nurse dragged her through the yard and house into her bedroom, where she used a lift to hoist Christy into bed.
“102 feet it was to my room,” Christy said.
“Both legs were broke, left arm was fractured,” Kenneth Corum said.
The complaint said the nurse left as Christy's condition was deteriorating.
“Her eyes rolled in her head. And at that point, I called 9-1-1,” Kenneth Corum said.
Christy was taken to Orange Park Medical Center.
Kenneth said at one point, his daughter quit breathing.
Medical records show Christy suffered a head injury and spent two weeks in a coma.
“The whole time, they said don’t expect a whole lot. It didn’t look good,” Kenneth said.
Miraculously, she pulled through.
“I remember when I first came out of the coma. Them telling me everything that had happened and showing me pictures and everything— it was all very surreal,” Christy said.
Christy spent six weeks in the hospital and months in rehab.
Medical bills are still arriving.
“It's hundreds of thousands of dollars. At least what we’ve gotten so far,” Gower said.
Nurse registry companies are not liable
Gower filed a lawsuit against the nurse and River City Home Health, alleging negligence.
In response, River City Home Health’s attorney filed a motion to dismiss, saying the company wasn’t liable since it is a nurse registry.
A Florida law passed in 2014 defines nurses working for nurse registries as independent contractors.
It exempts nurse registries from “management of and liability for” those contractors.
“They should be held accountable,” Christy said.
“You can’t even have a car without insurance. So how do you run a licensed business for health care without being responsible for what you do?” Kenneth said.
Currently, there are 1,173 nurse registries licensed in Florida, including 178 in the Tampa Bay area.
The I-Team has identified lawsuits against nurse registries in Hillsborough, Palm Beach, and Broward Counties.
“Sure enough, those cases had been thrown out after the judge had determined, yeah, this is a nurse registry,” Gower said.
Florida taxpayers paying the price
We emailed River City Home Health’s owner, but she didn’t respond.
We went by their office, which had a locked door, no lights, and no one answered.
The judge in Christy's lawsuit denied River City Home Health’s motion to dismiss, so the lawsuit will proceed.
Recently, the U.S. Department of Labor found a Sarasota nurse registry company “misclassified caregivers as independent contractors” in a case involving payment of overtime.
Gower believes that might open the door to a different interpretation of the law, which would allow these companies to be held accountable in cases where a person is injured.
In the meantime, he says we’re all paying the price.
“If anything happens, it’s not the nursing registries who are going to pay for it, it’s gonna be the taxpayers, it's gonna be Florida citizens,” Gower said.
If you have a story you’d like the I-Team to investigate, email us at adam@abcactionnews.com.
