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By JIM ROSS
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 6, 2000
John Thrasher, speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, has appointed state Rep. Nancy Argenziano to serve on a task force that will study ways to improve long-term care for the elderly in Florida.
Argenziano, R-Crystal River, has focused on this topic since voters sent her to Tallahassee in 1996. Frank Brogan, the lieutenant governor, will chair the 19-member task force. Argenziano said she hoped at least one of the task force's meetings would be held in Citrus County.
SURGERY RESTRICTIONS: Citrus Memorial Hospital made news earlier this year when it won a coveted "certificate of need" from the state to develop an adult open-heart surgery program.
But not every hospital was so fortunate. And one of those hospitals, Indian River Memorial, isn't taking the bad news quietly.
Indian River in June filed a legal challenge to the regulatory process that limits the number of hospitals Florida allows to operate open-heart surgery programs, the Wall Street Journal reported.
An administrative law judge is scheduled to begin hearing arguments in September. A decision in the case could come by the end of the year.
CONGRATULATIONS: Delores "Dee" Williams, a registered nurse, has won the Gail Peterson Award, which Citrus County Health Department employees bestow each year on a colleague who serves the community in outstanding fashion.
Williams, an epidemiology nurse at the department's Lecanto office, started a support group for people who suffer from hepatitis C. The virus, which attacks the liver, is spread through contact with an infected person's blood.