On the day Dr. Mary Ehlenbach toured the Kidz Korner nursing home for children with complex medical needs, she encountered a little boy confined to one of two cribs in a large room. The boy appeared excited to see visitors, and when a caregiver lowered a railing to his crib, he bolted.
“He made a run for it,” Ehlenbach, medical director of the Pediatric Complex Care Program at the University of Wisconsin, testified at a recent trial. “He hopped out of that bed and was really jetting for the door.” A staff member “intercepted” him.
The child’s fate, and that of 139 other Florida children who are living their lives in institutions, no longer rests with nursing home employees — or even state health administrators, who have fought for 12 years to keep them there. It now belongs to U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks, who is presiding over a civil rights lawsuit filed by the U.S. Justice Department against state health regulators.
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