Health Director Resigns: May Apparently Lost the Support at State Level

By Jessica Machetta, Florida Keys Keynoter, Marathon

Mar. 3–After what Dr. Susana May, director of the Monroe County Health Department, calls a “lack of support from Tallahassee,” she’s decided to call it quits.

May said after a former Health Department employees who she “helped get off the bus” – fired – spoke out against her and the department in a Key West weekly tabloid, she asked the Florida Department of Health for support.

The administration said “don’t say anything, we would just like you to resign,” May said. “I’ve given my blood, sweat and tears to this health department. I feel like I’ve given everything I can and it’s time to move on.”

“I’m a professional and I’m a lady – I don’t really need to stoop to answering the blue paper’s allegations,” she added. “It’s beneath my dignity to have to spar with the blue paper.”

May has been Health Department director since March 2, 2004. Her resignation is effective March 15.

May said she had been thinking to resign because of what she’s perceived as a lack of financial support or to even “be able to offer the Health Department employees a living wage.”

“Because of lack of funding, we were forced to downsize, which was a disheartening fact of life for everyone,” she said.

About six weeks ago, the Dr. Rafael Penalver Community Health Center in Little Havana, part of the University of Miami Jackson Hospital Network, offered May a position as director of preventative medicine.

At the time, she says she told them she would consider it, but that now she feels the time is right to move on.

“I need to sell my condo in Key West and get a place in Miami,” she said. “I’m not just ready to start right away – probably sometime in April,” adding that she is still in negotiations about a contract.

She earns $135,000 per year at the Health Department, and owns a house on Plantation Key, from when she ran an Upper Keys medical practice before becoming director. She plans to spending weekends there when she moves to Miami.

“I’m really looking forward to this position because it’s something I’ve always wanted to do – preventative medicine in the Hispanic community,” she said. “I’m really going back to my roots here, giving back to the Cuban community. I still plan to participate in the Keys community because I love it here. I plan to retire here one day. I’ll become a volunteer, especially if there were to be disasters, and assist in any way that I can; we have very excellent health department team.”

Wendy Riemann, spokeswoman for the state Department of Health, says it’s a lengthy process to determine who will replace May, and that it could be someone from within the department or the private sector.

In the meantime, an interim director will be appointed, she said. The state Health Department makes recommendations to the Monroe County Commission, and the two bodies work together to appoint someone, she said.

Of the resignation, Riemann said, “When [May] talked to [the administration], it was decided that it would be in the best interest of the Monroe County Health Department to have a leadership change and her resignation seems to be an amicable agreement.”

Local health officials don’t appear to be concerned that the resignation will impact them negatively.

“I think that she’s set up a structure so that it will continue to run well,” said Kim Bassett, chief executive officer of Fishermen’s Hospital in Marathon. “Under Dr. May’s watch, I think the emergency response in our county … has dramatically improved. She hired some key people that helped get our health-care emergency response organized, working with the [Emergency Operations Center].”

Bassett said she sits on various committees with May and that “every spare minute of her time was spent finding additional funding to continue the programs that are so vital to our community, such as vaccine programs,” and that “whoever takes on her responsibility has some pretty big shoes to fill.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, Florida Keys Keynoter, Marathon

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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