BCFR taking steps to cope with Rockledge Hospital's upcoming closing of emergency room
Brevard County Fire Rescue Assistant Chief Orlando Dominguez Jr. says Rockledge Hospital plans to stop accepting patients transported by BCFR to its emergency room on April 7 — more than two weeks before the hospital's scheduled April 22 closing.
Dominguez says that will further tax BCFR's medical services and other local hospitals, forcing the county to take drastic steps to cope with the loss of one of its major hospitals.
The county, for example, is enlisting the help of Coastal Health Systems of Brevard — a Rockledge-based provider of non-emergency ambulance service — to help BCFR in medical transports, in cases in which the patient's injury or condition is not too serious.
Brevard County Fire Rescue is concerned that closing the hospital will increase ambulance ride times by 20 minutes or more, and will increase emergency room wait times in other facilities.
Orlando Health said it plans to build a new hospital in Brevard County, but has not disclosed the location or the timetable for its opening.
Brevard commission approves tourism grants to smaller groups, travelling Vietnam Memorial
On Tuesday, county commissioners unanimously approved tourism tax grants for four groups that had been withheld last year due to changes in the county's guidelines.
In total, there was $100,000 in grant money for this purpose, funded by Brevard County's 5% tourist development tax on hotel rooms, vacation rentals and other short-term rentals.
In January Commissioner Rob Feltner proposed that each of the five Brevard County commissioners be allotted $20,000 to distribute that money as they see fit to different cultural organizations, with the approval of the other commissioners.
The commissioners unanimously approved funding for the Melbourne Art Festival, the Native Rhythms Festival, Green Gables in Melbourne and Field Manor on Merrit Island.
Brevard school board: Close alternative learning centers; split meeting public comments
In front of a sparse audience on Tuesday night, Brevard's school board moved forward with closing offsite learning facilities for expelled students and approving a revised public comment policy in the wake of a Moms for Liberty-led lawsuit.
The decisions on both the alternative learning centers and the comment policy came after less than two months of development.
At a Jan. 14 offsite work session, the board first proposed the idea of closing alternative learning centers in favor of keeping students at their home campuses for the duration of their expulsion, with students mandated to take part in a diversion program.
They also hashed out the details of an updated public comment policy in subsequent weeks, opting to split comments by agenda- and non-agenda-related comments. Due to concerns about student and staff privacy and obscenity, non-agenda comments won't be broadcast or recorded, according to policy.
The board unanimously approved both the comment policy and the alternative learning centers' closure.
Funding cuts proposed by the NIH prompt Florida Tech to prepare other avenues for funding
Florida Tech could be facing a 66% budget cut with the grants it receives from the National Institute of Health.
At the beginning of February, the NIH announced that it would be capping indirect costs at 15% for all institutions that received its funding. This change was put on a temporary hold on Feb. 10 after 22 states sued over the new order. The hold was extended on Feb. 21, meaning any change in funding is still a proposal and has not been enacted yet.
According to Hamid Rassoul, the Sr. associate provost for research and chief research officer at Florida Tech, the university holds a total of seven NIH grants and a sub-award as a part of a Vanderbilt University project. Rassoul said the university has developed a contingency plan to continue their programs even if the funding is cut.