FL Doctor Fired For Selling $50 Mask Exemption Letters: Report

TALLAHASSEE, FL — An emergency room physician at Capital Regional Medical Center in Tallahassee has been let go after the hospital learned he was offering to sign mask exemption letters for students attending Leon County Schools for a fee, according to reports.

For $50, Dr. Brian Warden offered to schedule a screening with families who don’t want their children wearing masks at school and said he'd sign a medical opt-out letter for them, WCTV reported. He advertised his services in a Facebook group called “Parents Against Masks.”

He said he was operating under his own business, Dove Field Health LLC, and wasn’t representing the hospital, according to reports.

Warden is a recent medical school graduate who moved from Philadelphia to Tallahassee for a job with a physicians group that operates under a contract with CRMC.

“We act with absolute integrity in all that we do, and it is our expectation that providers behave in a way that is consistent with those values,” CRMC spokesperson Rachel Stiles told the Tallahassee Democrat. “Immediately upon learning of this physician’s actions, we began the process of removing him from providing services to our hospital patients.”

Leon County, where Tallahassee is located, is home to one of 10 Florida school districts defying Gov. Ron DeSantis’ July executive order that districts must give parents a choice about whether their children wear masks in the classroom or not, effectively barring school mask mandates.

In addition to Leon County Schools, other Florida school districts that have put a mask mandate in place — with only a medical exemption — at the start of the 2021-22 school year include those in Alachua, Broward, Duval, Indian River, Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Orange, Palm Beach and Sarasota counties.