Addressed: Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, Dane Eagle

Hello, my name is Rene Pulido MD, and I am the owner and founder of Emed Multispecialty group. I am a Mayo Clinic Trained Family Medicine Physician, and I am writing this letter today as a public complaint about current issues that we are having with the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. The primary concern that we have is the Department of Economic Opportunity is failing to notify employers in a timely manner when previous employees are applying for unemployment.

Failing to notify employers of applications made by previous employees places a tremendous financial liability on employers and risks businesses possibly having to shut down at a time when the economy is already historically difficult for small businesses. There is only a short window of time when my company can appeal unemployment applications and decisions or add input for the application process. By not being notified in a timely fashion of unemployment applications by the Department of Economic Opportunity, this has removed my companies’ ability to appeal the process and has taxed my business even when employees do not correctly qualify. This has placed a significant strain on my business which is currently paying unemployment benefits for previous employees that simply do not qualify for the program.  To add insult to injury there is no clear way of checking how many of my previous employees are receiving these benefits and the online portal is of no help.

We have called multiple times to try to correct the issue but after endless wait times, we can never find anybody who has the training to respond to our questions. As an example, a previous employee of mine has received benefits from 2018-2020 even though I have a clear signed letter of resignation.

After multiple attempts to clarify this issue with the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity I have concluded that there are no other available options other than publicly complaining. If you have had similar issues with the department, please use the blog below so that we can add your complaints to our website. Hopefully if enough people complain upper government will change the Management over there, and we can finally get some organization.

Thanks

Rene U. Pulido MD

President of Emed Multispecialty Group