Solantic Urgent Care Chain Sold to Private Equity Firm–Owned by Florida Governor Rick Scott–Formerly Employed Doctor Discusses What It Was Like to Work There

The governor is now pretty much out of the health care management/investment side of the business with this sale. We all may remember that he spent a record $73 million on his campaign to become governor. It’s interesting to see how the value of Solantic fell over the last couple of years as well. Right now he’s not that popular in the state with the recently signed budget.

Florida Governor Rick Scott Signs State Budget That Cuts Medicaid Reimbursements in the Sate by 12% While Florida HMO Profits Were Up 16%

You can read the entire article at the link but basically the doctor talks about the working conditions at the office where he worked and the day to day evaluations and how those at the bottom as far as not meeting standards were clipped off. 14 hour shifts were expected and everything evolved around the bottom line. Clinic management turnover was frequent and it was not unusual to see 70 to 90 patents a day, that’s a huge workload in anyone’s books and was the bottom line focus putting patient safety in danger? According to the doctor’s comments, getting revenue built was the big focus.

Incentives are supposed to be good but in this case were they set too high? Cameras were in all office but we kind of expect that today but the staff was expected to suggest extras for patients to buy as well, so with 70 patients a day how much care time did they get versus marketing time to buy vitamins and so forth? BD

When family practice physician Randy Prokes joined Solantic Urgent Care in 2004, he told state investigators, his Neptune Beach clinic brought in just $2,000 a day.

By the time he was fired from that job nearly six years later, Prokes said, that same clinic had quadrupled revenues to about $8,000 a day, reaping profit margins unheard of at most doctors' offices.

To achieve the urgent care chain's aggressive financial goals, doctors and nurse practitioners were expected to stand through 14-hour shifts, Prokes told state investigators in a Florida Department of Law Enforcement file obtained by The Palm Beach Post.

The sale of the Solantic urgent care chain to a New York private equity group this month marks Florida Gov. Rick Scott's exit from health industry management.

Ex-Solantic doctor tells of intense pressure on staff to reap revenue