Ed note: First in an occasional series of reports leading up to the special election June 18.

By SARA KENNEDY

skennedy@bradenton.com

MANATEE -- The year was 1983 and the chief of the medical staff at Manatee Memorial Hospital was applying for staff privileges at a competing hospital.

His doctors were fleeing Manatee Memorial, which was running low on patients. They preferred what is now called Blake Medical Center, a newer hospital.

Bradenton's publicly owned hospital needed renovation, and the county didn't have the money, so officials began looking for a buyer.

They found a suitor in nonprofit Baptist Hospitals and Health Systems, of Phoenix, which in 1984 paid $44,264,075 for the venerable hospital located at U.S. Highway 301 and Manatee Avenue.

The money from the sale went into a health care trust fund.

Up to 75 percent of the interest earned on proceeds from the sale, or $3,576,789 in the first year, went toward health care for indigent patients.

The remaining interest was to be put back into the fund used for other health-related programs. By 2002, the fund balance had risen to a high of $61 million, according to a county spreadsheet charting the health care trust fund's entire 29-year history.

Excerpt from:

Manatee indigent health care trust fund: wisely spent or squandered?