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Florida’s 695 Nursing homes and 3,101 Assisted Living Facilities are required under a new law to install permanent generators capable of cooling for 96 hours or come up with a temporary solution by June 1st.

The new generator law was put in place after a dozen elderly residents died of heat stroke in a south florida nursing home after it lost power in Hurricane Irma.

Now, hurricane season is underway and a state agency shows the vast majority of nursing homes and assisted living facilities in the state have not installed generators.

Numbers released by the Agency for Health Care Administration a week before the deadline showed 74% weren’t in compliance.

“I do think the numbers do seem very low,” said Shaddrick Haston, CEO of the Florida Assisted Living Association. “However, I believe that there are a lot of facilities that are currently in compliance or that they’re waiting for additional information to come back.”

 

139 facilities had installed permanent generators and 691 facilities were granted an extension.

Kristen Knapp with the Florida Healthcare Association says facilities given an extension have to have other protections in place.

“You know if they have zoning challenges or equipment on order they do have the ability to have a mobile generator moved in,” said Knapp.

Facilities say there are numerous challenges which have made it difficult to come into compliance.

“We’re seeing some of our members have to install tanks,” said Haston. “We’re seeing some of our members have the generators on back order.”

AHCA says it’s received hundreds of submissions from facilities since its last report.

It will be releasing new numbers Friday.

Any facilities still out of compliance will receive a notice of violation and then the possibility of fines or other penalties.

While AHCA only plans to release consolidated numbers once a week, the public can check on the status of individual facilities at www.floridahealthfinder.gov.

That information is updated daily.