Passidomo lays out plan to improve Florida health care system

TAMPA, Fla. – Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, pushed for more medical residency openings for students graduating from Florida colleges in an interview on Florida’s Voice with Brendon Leslie.

“We graduate hundreds of medical students, doctors in our universities and we don’t have enough residency slots to accommodate them,” Passidomo said. “They leave the state for residency, and then they just don’t come back. We’re going to put more dollars into more residency slots in Florida.”

Passidomo spoke on her goals for Florida’s upcoming legislative session, a top priority being health care. Lawmakers will convene for the session in Tallahassee on Jan. 9, 2024.

Citing a growing, older population, Passidomo emphasized Florida’s need for more health care personnel.

“Right now, we don’t have enough health care personnel to handle our needs today,” Passidomo said. “As the state grows, it’s going to become more and more challenging.”

Passidomo said the issue of medical personnel goes beyond socioeconomic status.

“It’s whether you have insurance, you don’t have insurance, whether you’re a millionaire, or whether you’re a middle class worker, or whether you are an indigent,” Passidomo said. “If we don’t have personnel to care for you, nobody’s gonna get health care.”

In expanding Florida’s health care outreach, Passidomo advocated for a loan reimbursement program. She also pushed for healthcare workers outside of Florida to come work in the state.

“If you graduated from nursing school and medical school with debt, and you’re willing to volunteer your time, in addition to your job, either at clinics or health care, we can give you credit for that and reimburse you for those hours,” Passidomo said.

Furthermore, Passidomo wants to prioritize more birthing centers in Florida.

“There are less and less hospitals [that] are willing to do labor and delivery,” Passidomo said. “We’re going to need places for people who will have children, including our rural areas, which some of which don’t even have hospitals.”

While bringing attention to healthcare, Passidomo pinpointed emergency rooms as “the most expensive real estate in Florida.” She also urged hospitals to open or partner with clinics to give patients an alternative who might not need emergency care.

Through technological advances, Passidomo highlighted the state’s “Healthcare at Home” program. The initiative allows for a patient to interact with their physician right from home.

She added the importance of creating a mental health teaching hospital. Florida does not currently have a hospital dedicated to teaching mental health, Passidomo said.

“We want to be able to not only grow mental health personnel in a teaching hospital, but that [there] would be a hospital that would be affiliated with one of our universities,” Passidomo said.

She stressed the importance of treating patients at a hospital who can’t go home while calling the issue of mental health a “huge problem.”

Pivoting from healthcare, Passidomo underscored the state’s importance of land conservation.

“If we don’t manage it properly, then we’re going to end up having pythons and melaleucas,” Passidomo said. “We really try to put together a robust land management program.”

Passidomo said she hopes to use dollars from Florida’s recent gaming agreements with state tribes to help push environmental protections.

“It kind of goes hand in hand with the tribes, fostering our environment and caring for our environment since day one,” Passidomo said.