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In a crowded North Miami Beach City Hall chamber, elected officials, first responders and healthcare workers gathered to establish a task force to better regulate senior facilities, in the wake of eight deaths in Hollywood. The task force, started Tuesday, aims to combine efforts to enact national, state and local policies to ensure the safety of those in assisted living facilities in the wake of a disaster. (Ostroff, 9/19)

A ninth patient from a South Florida nursing home that overheated during power outages following Hurricane Irma died on Tuesday, according to police. The death of Carlos Canal, the ninth patient, occurred nearly a week after the nursing home in Hollywood, Fla., became the focus of a criminal investigation when the air conditioning failed and eight other patients ultimately died. (Berman, 9/19)

It does not take a hurricane to put nursing home residents at risk when disaster strikes. Around the country, facilities have been caught unprepared for far more mundane emergencies than the hurricanes that recently struck Florida and Houston, according to an examination of federal inspection records. Those homes rarely face severe reprimands, records show, even when inspectors identify repeated lapses. (Rau, 9/19)

Four days after the owners of a Hollywood nursing home released a detailed time line casting blame for the deaths of eight elders on Florida health administrators and a local utility, Gov. Rick Scott’s administration issued a time line of its own — declaring that the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills “failed to do their basic duty to protect life.” (Marbin Miller and Klas, 9/19)