Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the law June 25, marking a triumph for lawmakers after four previous attempts to create such laws failed since 2014. The law will go into effect in January 2020.
Florida, and Miami-Dade County in particular, has long been a destination for patients around the world looking for discount procedures, resulting in several surgery-related injuries and deaths. The new law allows the state to stop a clinic’s operations or revoke the clinic’s registration if it is deemed a threat to the public.
“Now we’ll be able to stop [unethical practices] because the Department of Health will not issue a license to anyone for at least five years in these horrible cases,” said state Sen. Anitere Flores, who introduced the successful bill. The law allows the state to deny anyone whose registration has been revoked from registering a surgery office for five years.
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