Mary Daniel patient-visitation bill signing | Florida, April 2022

Transcript recovered from the original video captions. Automatic captions may contain recognition errors.

Original source recording

0:01 past two years one of the most heartbreaking elements of this was shutting people out of being with their loved ones at really critical times in their lives and we worked very hard to make sure that in long-term care facilities we had visitation i think we were the first state in the country to do that you know almost two years too and i think was august of 2020 we worked very hard with our hospitals

0:27 to tell them yes i understand you're trying to mitigate covet and that's important but you can't just shut out all these human interactions for people who are in the hospital and have really difficult circumstances and i can tell you if you take people and they have that connection and they have loved ones with them they are more likely to recover don't tell me that that's not true and

0:52 so you can't just shut out every type of human interaction because you're dealing with a respiratory virus there's nothing wrong with taking precautions and and if they want you to wear ppe but to not let somebody be there with their loved one end of life situations just to lose a family member and be shut out of being able to go into the hospital that is fundamentally wrong to have other ish

1:18 instances where you have people that are going uh to get treated and to not have you know a spouse or or a parent this is really really difficult and yes obviously there were people that were hospitalized for code there's people hospitalized for many other things and yet they were not allowed to have people in many parts of this country for a long time and so i think most of the

1:42 hospitals in florida most of the long-term care facilities have tried to work constructively to do that but we understood that look covet is never going to be eradicated from the from the earth that's just not the way it is these viruses circulate it's going to become part uh it's going to be an endemic virus and i think a lot of people have had it and there's a lot of

2:03 protection out there so hopefully the the clinical impacts are going to be less as we go forward but you know there it comes and goes in waves there's times in in the south over the summer in the north you have big waves in the winter and and we don't know how that's going to go but regardless of that that cannot be used as a justification to separate loved ones from each other

2:25 to deny somebody who's in the hospital the right to have their spouse present or their children present and so we thought that we needed to make sure that florida was leading the way on this to protect patients rights uh to make sure that as somebody who if you're hospitalized or you're in a long-term care facility you have the right to have your family members present with you and

2:49 we we have to we have to stand up and say that and so actually under the trump administration they relax they had suspended visitation in nursing homes and then they put that back in in 2020 we obviously did that even beforehand we were ahead of the curve but you know hhs and the federal government they've yet to reinstate visitation protections for patients and hospitals

3:17 nationwide and so you usually have protections they're not as strong as what i'm going to sign into law today but they're they're usually as federal protections and they have basically suspended those protections and so you have some parts of the country where people still aren't able to get in and see their loved ones in these certain circumstances and so what we're doing here today

3:39 is underscoring and solidifying in florida law these really significant rights for floridians and so the bill that we're going to sign today is called the no patient left alone act and it increases patient protections and ensures florida families have a fundamental right to visit their loved ones receiving care in florida hospitals hospices and long-term care facilities the bill bans

4:06 facilities from requiring visitors to show proof of covet vaccination you know there's some places that you know people have coveted they have immunity so they're not getting vaccinated and then they're being denied the ability to go into these places uh meanwhile you can hear folks um who have not had covid and their protection isn't isn't even as strong so we wanted to make sure that

4:30 was good also policies cannot prohibit physical contact such as hugging between their loved ones they would actually police this where you go in and you said okay you may be able to go but you can't give uh your wife a hug or you can't give your your your kid a hug i mean give me a break and so we need to be able to protect that this ensures families can be there and patients can have their support system

4:55 around them when it matters most and i want to thank our first lady my wife for all the work that she did to get this bill across the finish line you know we've over the last six months experienced this first hand and i was um you know i would go with her to her chemotherapy and when she was in the hospital and you're there and i can tell you if if i had not been there

5:20 it would have been more difficult for her i mean you know you need to have the people that you love there with you and so um we were we were fortunate to be able to do that uh but i i think that's what that should be the expectation you know that you have that and then if we i mean just imagine like we have young kids i mean what you're not going to let the both the parents in to be if you

5:40 have a kid that has that has a problem so so this is really important and i know that this was something that was really meaningful for her and i think that she she did a really good job but isolating people is not healthy that is not the right thing to do and making sure that we're facilitating the connections that really make life worth living is is something that's very very important and

6:03 you have these situations even if it's more of a routine hospitalization just the fact that that support system is there means an awful lot and then of course you know we do have these situations where someone comes to the end of the road you have an end of life situation and to be able to have all the family present to be able to say goodbye that is so meaningful and to deprive

6:25 them of that is really really bad and so that's not going to happen in the state of florida and i do want to say we've had a lot of hospitals that have really worked constructively with us on this because i think they understood how significant this is and i think it's the right thing to do i also think just from a health care perspective you know i think it does lead to better outcomes to

6:46 have have the support you've got enough going on when you're in the hospital for something uh and the last thing you want to be is just sitting there wondering where all your family is and be be lonely and isolated so this was a good bill this is a bill that i'm really proud to be able to sign into law momentarily after we hear from some of our folks and i hope that the federal government

7:07 will reinstate the protections federally uh that they found it's been two years now with this and the idea that you still have some families that will not be allowed to be together at these critical moments anywhere in our country is a real real uh sad commentary on the state of affairs that we see so florida's not going to be denied that we're going to make sure that we're fighting for our

7:30 patients and that's what we do here today we've got a lot of great people that are here to be able to offer um some comments and so we're going to start with our secretary of what we call akka that oversees all the hospital system in the nursing homes in florida simone marsh stellar governor thank you very much and good afternoon i want you all to know if you don't already know

7:58 that compassion and caring for the people of the state of florida is what drives this man i see it every day i work for him and compassion and caring quite candidly is what this bill is all about the governor and the first lady are champions for our florida families and and for all of our citizens and as you heard the governor say just now not letting people have visitors and have their loved ones

8:27 with them at a time when they need family around them the most is is unthinkable and so the governor of the first lady the legislature we all understand and this is what this bill does it gives individuals the fundamental right to have a visitor in the hospital if you're in the nursing home if you're in an alf or any other long-term care facility this is just another example

9:02 of this governor's continued effort to make sure that floridians can make the decisions that they need to make for themselves and their families when it comes to health care as opposed to being told what we have to do what we can do and what we can't do we know that in cases in which as the governor has mentioned when folks are at their at their tough in the toughest situations that

9:29 they're in that family members loved ones physical contact there's nothing that can be physical contact seeing somebody on an ipad not going to do it we need to make sure and this bill makes sure that individuals and hospitals long-term care facilities can have that so i want to just give you all sort of an idea of this a little bit of the specifics of the bill and then let you know what my agency is

9:58 doing to make sure that this bill when it's enacted into law is going to do exactly what we expect it to do so from the moment that the governor signs the bill the facilities that are covered are going to have 30 days within which to develop visitation policies if they don't already have them that ensure that individuals can designate an essential caregiver that individual is allowed to visit

10:29 no matter what and in addition to any other visitors that are allowed visitors are going to have to be allowed for a variety of situations end of life if an individual who was living with family before entering a facility is having difficulty in struggling with the change in environment if the individual has to make a very important health care decision you want your family with you right

10:55 if an individual is experiencing emotional distress or grieving the loss of a friend or family member who recently died if a person needs cueing or encouragement to eat or drink which was previously provided by a family member or caregiver if someone who used to talk and and interact with others suddenly now is seldom speaking with individuals that person certainly needs

11:20 to have visits from family members and loved ones certainly as it as it relates to hospitals in situations of childbirth visitation has to be allowed and finally pediatric parents as a mom i can only imagine how i would feel if my child were ill and in a hospital and i couldn't see her and let me just say my child is 38 years old now but i still would want to be with her if

11:51 she's in in that kind of situation wouldn't you absolutely so senate bill 988 makes it clear that healthcare facilities have to allow in-person visitation and as the governor mentioned cannot require procedures and protocols that are any more stringent for visitors than they would be for staff so what is my agency doing to make sure that visitation is open and available to everyone

12:21 two things number one hopefully by the end of today if not by the end of today tomorrow my agency is um putting a v a dedicated webpage on our website to let everyone know exactly what the fundamental rights are that are provided by this bill and how to go about submitting a complaint should anyone be denied visitation with their loved ones and i'm happy to announce that my agency

12:53 has a dedicated toll-free number for visitation complaints and that is 888-775-6000 so if you don't want to make a complaint online you can call that number and we have people ready to assist and i need for you all to know but also the facilities that we regulate to know that the agency for health care administration is going to be surveying these facilities to make sure that they have

13:28 their policies in place to make sure that the policies are posted on their websites and if those things are not done they are subject to being held in violation of the law we know how important visitation is we have always been throughout the pandemic we have been dedicated to making sure that people can see their loved ones we're going to continue to stand ready and stand guard to make sure your

14:01 fundamental rights are protected so thank you governor and thank you all thank you okay florida surgeon general dr joe ladopo [Applause] good app good morning good afternoon yes yeah i i don't know how long i can keep using my three kids as an excuse for being disoriented about the time of day but you know the the bill that we're discussing is is is very important because of what it

14:40 does and also because of what it demonstrates and in particular what it demonstrates is that we went through a time period in this country where crisis and emergency became an excuse to treat human beings as something less than human beings that's what happened when individuals leaders of hospitals leaders of other institutions such as nursing homes decided that it was okay to deny people

15:14 who were sick in pain confused afraid or dying access to contact with those people who they love that was a dehumanizing measure that virtually every health care facility in this country decided it was okay to implement due to a crisis so crisis will never be a reason for us to treat other human beings as being less than human and this bill says that that's that's absolutely going to be the case

15:55 and i appreciate this bill for that reason because frankly even though we've gotten through sort of what appears to be the worst of the coveted pandemic we know that we're not done with crises and it's important to identify the thing that was wrong so that when the next crisis comes we can't you know leaders can't just go back to that same type of behavior and excuse themselves for it due to a crisis

16:28 i also want to highlight something that that secretary mark stiller said which is as i was standing here listening to the governor he used the word heartbreaking and that actually you know that that i think characterizes one of the reasons why so many people in this state in all the states in this country and around the world admire him and are appreciative of him because that

16:56 it was heartbreaking that is the you know that's the core that is the core element of that decision to separate people at the time of their of their greatest vulnerability from contact with other people that meant something to them that helped them feel safe and grounded to you know to to what it you know to their to being human and to being on earth and everything else

17:20 and you know and that he can that that our governor desantis can can voice that with integrity with with with complete with complete genuineness is is what makes is one of the things that makes him so special and i think many of us realize how special it is and it's it's also amazing that that so much of our future in terms of the course that we lay out sort of emerging from the the worst

17:48 parts of this pandemic are dependent on on leadership and frankly on his leadership which is just an amazing thing to say that so much can be on one person's shoulders but i know he can handle it but but it's true and paving that path for this and for other decisions that basically hurt people who shouldn't have been hurt whether it's whether it's what happened with schools whether it's what's

18:14 happened with families that have lost opportunities because of a crisis because of a pandemic finding our way out of that so that we can avoid making these types of mistakes in the future is is probably the most important thing that we can do right now so we are you know we're in a special time we have special special leader and secretary mart stiller is also awesome and she will make sure that this gets

18:40 done right [Applause] all right so we're going to hear uh from from a couple folks so charlene miranda are you here good afternoon my name is charlene miranda and i am you can't hear me is that better i can see it can you hear me no you want to hold the mic maybe try it now is that better great my name is charlene miranda i am a wife a mother and a breast cancer survivor i was diagnosed with stage three breast

19:28 cancer just nine months after having a baby i went through chemotherapy i was hospitalized multiple times all alone during the one of my several hospitalizations i was in borderline critical condition and while i've always thought of myself as someone strong-willed with a passion for life a zest and a will to live i can tell you being alone in the hospital without my husband

19:59 almost made me lose that will to live and i never want that to happen to anyone again and unfortunately so many thousands of patients just like myself were all alone during hospitalizations and or chemo and so um i want to thank our governor and first lady casey desantis and our florida legislatures to make sure um for passing this bill to make sure that this will never happen to

20:30 patients and to anyone going forward in the future just because you know you only get one life and it's important to be able to share those moments especially when you're in need of having your loved one with you there thank you [Applause] okay doug madigan my situation was quite a bit different because of timing the governor had already started opening things up so in 2021

21:11 my wife got to take advantage of a lot of pt and ot for her parkinson's pt for lymphedema at the cape coral vocational rehab facility and then on the 17th november she had a stroke and got the paramedics there took her to the gulf coast medical center er when i got there she was on life support which she wasn't when she left my first question was ask the brain surgery is the only thing that might save her and

21:44 my wife and i already did living wills and that was not part of what we thought was right a nurse said let me get you the chaplain he was a rabbi i'm catholic he was great but i he said can i get you on a catholic priest yeah just help me so made the decision no surgery so they moved my wife to the icu one of my sons was in town so he was able to join me for that great nurse she explained the next steps

22:16 and she said it's probably good for you to go home and get all your family here for tomorrow which i did all of them in the same room when you're on live support you still can hear it was a we all agreed after individual and group visiting that it was time to uh turn off the life support you don't know whether the person will live or not or breathe she did her heart was strong

22:47 so we went home that night got a call the next day things were getting worse everybody the doctor the nurse the hospice man everybody figured that she would probably pass away by noon on on the 19th she didn't finally we went home about 6 p.m said we'll see you tomorrow but the doctor had told us sometimes when they're alone nobody around they decide it's time hour later it's what happened

23:18 sorry for crying but we got treated very well thank you governor as you can see this is a very sentimental subject so i'm going to read from uh from my notes you know no patient left alone is about protecting human dignity and compassion it makes clear that in florida at a person's greatest hour of need there will be a loved one by their side during the pandemic i heard of so many

24:01 families heart-wrenching stories frustration because they could not be with a relative who was hospitalized for whatever reason we all know of people who sadly died alone unable to feel the warmth of a loved one one's touch or a final goodbye this is unacceptable and this law makes certain that this will never ever happen again it was an honor to successfully shepherd the no patient left alone act along with

24:29 representative jason schoff i'd like to also thank uh kathy mears and and the rest of the uh the senators that um that helped me through this process uh extremely grateful also to governor desantis for his support and uh and leadership and if you don't mind i'd like to say it in spanish for you so for i don't know if there are any spanish spanish-speaking people here oh okay perfecto

24:55 one of the no patient left alone act una persona um [Applause] okay representative jason schoff thank you governor well i i think that the subject the reason we're here today has been covered very well we've got excellent excellent leaders in this state that have helped push this issue forward from the governor and the first lady personally getting involved and and putting all of their horsepower

26:21 behind it to a great senator and uh back home a lady named mary daniel clay yarborough there's just a host of people that really went all in on this and i can tell you that throughout the process there has been nothing better than to be able to give a give a call back to the constituents that called me during the lockdown to let me know what was happening and let them know your governor has your back

26:47 your legislature has your back and going forward we won't be dealing with this again so thank you all right okay i'm gonna put the john hancock on the bill and we'll make it official okay today is april what six well i just want to say you know really really happy to be able uh to make a difference you know there are different things you know that happen some of them get

28:24 more attention than others you know i would say not being able to visit um it has not gotten the attention it deserves i mean i think there was a effort i think the the the media was very pro-lockdown that was viewed as something that was the right thing to do obviously you know it wasn't and so um but these stories are so powerful and when people are separated when they're not allowed to

28:48 have the loved ones there you know that has really incalculable damage and um you know the fact that you know we listen to doug i mean you hate to be in that situation but if you have to have that and we all eventually have to have that don't you want to be able to have your family there i mean your loved ones there so in florida uh you have that right in law and i think what dr latapo said is is

29:12 correct that um yes our hospitals by and large have been working well with this this is something we started talking about a lot really one of the problems probably the first governor you know to say guys you need to be letting these letting our folks in to see their loved ones and it's not just end of life i mean just you have a teenage kid that breaks a leg they need to have their

29:33 parents in there with them like yeah that's not going to be a fatal thing but that's important it's a it's a traumatizing thing to be hospitalized or to have some stuff like that so we're proud of doing that but we also recognize that you know we were all sitting here three years ago and i had told you that there would be governors in this country that would lock little

29:51 kids out of school for a year shut churches down you know there were states in this country that lot shut churches down but yet they have liquor stores and strip clubs open who would have thought that would ever have been acceptable in the united states and so i think we've seen that if you're not vigilant about some of these things and you have the wrong leaders in place um

30:12 you know you can have some really bad decisions and so you know hopefully uh there would be no retreating on this in the foreseeable future but if there is another crisis i think it's important that we not lose sight over things that really matter don't let people whip up fear so much that you're depriving people of basic human dignity and i think that this bill today really creates um you know cement around

30:38 those those rights and so as different things and in the currents of life and different issues that come up as those go back and forth these rights to be with your loved ones are fundamental um and they're not going to be able to be ignored and so so that's a good day for the state of florida and again we're leading on this where where other states um you know have not been willing to do so and and

31:02 why not i mean we've been leading on a lot of other stuff that we're very proud of you know we have right now we have the largest budget surplus in the history of this state by a country mile uh not even close if you look at the state that's closest to us in population is new york state they have three million fewer people than we do they have the budget is over twice the

31:24 size there taxes through the roof and yet we have better roads better infrastructure higher performing k-12 schools and our public university systems ranked number one in the nation five years in a row by u.s news and world report and we do all of that with no income tax and the lowest per capita tax burden in the united states so that's what you call leading [Applause]

31:50 you look at what a lot of these other cities were doing how horribly they were treating the police over the last couple years you know they were cutting funding for police they weren't supporting the police and you saw crime skyrocket in places like seattle and chicago and minneapolis and new york and what did we do in florida we never stop supporting people in law enforcement while other areas were

32:16 defunding or cutting funding last year we did a thousand dollar bonus for every single firefighter and police officer in the state of florida [Applause] and then we thought it was good so we got the legislature to put it in the budget again for this year so two years in a row every single person that wears the uniform is gonna get a thousand dollar bonus check from us [Applause]

32:45 and you notice we don't allow what they do in like new york where they don't have any cash bail so they put the criminals right back on the street so someone will get arrested for a sexual assault they'll put them right back on the street and then they end up committing other crimes instead of being put put behind bars and so you know in florida we don't believe in that we

33:08 believe in holding people accountable when they violate the law and we're not going to let the criminals take the upper hand over the victims of crime and you also saw what we did last year we signed a bill as all these other places were defunding law enforcement we signed a bill saying that in florida we're not going to let any local government defund law enforcement if

33:29 they try to do it we will put the money back in so that people are safe and i think having those messages that's part of the reasons why so many of these police officers want to move to florida and oh by the way on friday i signed a bill that's even going to open the floodgates more we said that a lot of people have not it used to be very hard to get a job in law enforcement people wanted it now they're

33:52 treated very poorly by the media and by others that it's harder to recruit we have a better job in florida because we have a very uh law and order culture but there's vacancies and so you have people that are being treated horribly in seattle minneapolis new york all these places and so what we said is anyone who's new to law enforcement in florida either one of our young people that

34:12 decide to go in as their first profession or transferring in from these other cities and states if you do that and take a position in florida we now in law have five thousand dollar signing bonuses for all of those folks who come and fill these positions in florida so that's going to make a huge huge difference [Applause] i'm very concerned about uh what biden has done at the southern border um you

34:39 know since he's been president they've had 2 million come in illegally across the southern border i had helped send some people to help from texas to help texas last summer and i went down there and visited they're coming from all over the world we saw libyans we saw haitians we saw people from the middle east south america you name it they were coming and what's happened is you've seen the

35:02 biggest increase in human trafficking sex trafficking and drug trafficking than we've ever seen um in the modern history of our country the number one cause of debt like one of the the main things they're bringing across the border is fentanyl the number one cause of death between people 18 and 45 in the united states of america is fentanyl overdose and so when you have that flow coming in that has a

35:28 direct impact on communities all across this country with the fentanyl and you know i think it's i think it's been a disaster but what they're now doing is they're going to get rid of what they call title 42 so the one that the people that they were stopping now even they're going to be able to come and so i think those numbers are going to increase starting at the end of may so so that's

35:51 not good policy for this country and so what we're doing in florida is saying you know we're not going to let the recklessness of those policies impact our state so we do not if businesses or contractors are dumping people who are illegal into florida from southern texas you know we're going to go after their ability to do business in florida if biden is dumping people which

36:13 he has dumped people they fly him in at two in the morning they haven't done it lately but they did it many months ago um you know we now have money where we can reroute them to sanctuary states like delaware and we're going to do that to make sure that we're keeping people safe here we're all we're also very happy with what we're doing with education we have now since i become governor florida is

36:41 now ranked number three in the latest education week rankings for k-12 achievement and that used to not be the case when i was growing up in florida and so part of what we've done is you know we have the most robust school choice and the country parents low-income parents have opportunities to go we've got a lot of opportunities within the public school system like the

37:00 charter schools and then we just did the biggest increase in teacher compensation in the history of the state of florida and this budget that i'm about to sign and so we're putting an emphasis on american civics and making sure people understand why this country was founded and the principles and and all the key things about that and that's going to be real history and we're not going to have

37:22 indoctrination in our schools we're going to have education in our schools and we're also going to continue to do more with workforce training and skilled skills based education vocational education because there's a huge demand for these skills if you're a machinist or you can do tr drive trucks or you can do all these things you make really really good money at a very young age and we have a

37:47 lot of students that have gone to colleges and spent a lot of money and they end up in these degrees that are like you know zombie studies degree and then they end up working in a job they could have at a high school and so we're proud of our higher education system we don't let them raise tuition so it's actually affordable but some of these private colleges are very

38:07 expensive and i think some of the students have been sold the bill of goods that just go into debt infinitum and if you get a piece of paper somehow magic's going to happen that's not true you need to look to see how can you prepare yourself to be able to do well in society and so we've uh added 50 new apprenticeships throughout the state of florida we have more folks going to

38:28 things like truck driving we've expanded a diesel mechanic program all these different things that are not only giving the young people more opportunity but quite frankly make florida a more attractive place for people to bring manufacturing and we've had people move since covid and we have even more some major major manufacturing that we're in the process of bringing to florida so

38:50 that's really really exciting but it's an example of how being serious about education but particularly workforce education that can then make your state even more attractive uh to expand your industrial base and so we're gonna have some great announcements over the next four or five months along those lines and i'm really looking forward to that and um you know we're we're fortunate to be in a free

39:12 state i can tell you that folks that are in and i get a lot of correspondence into our office the people will write in from other states thanking us for what we're doing and leading on all these different issues including parents rights and making sure that parents um and uh have the have the primary seat at the table so we're going to keep doing it we got a lot more stuff

39:33 on our agenda over the next uh weeks and months and uh we're going to do all we can to to keep this state free so we thank you all for having us and god bless everybody [Applause]