A doctor at a Florida hospital was fired for offering to sell medical letters to parents that would exempt their children from a recently-passed school mask mandate, according to a report on Wednesday.
Dr. Brian Warden promoted the offer in an online post following the mask directive for Leon County students from grades K-8 that went into effect Sunday amid a surge of cases in the Sunshine State, the Tallahassee Democrat reported.
Warden said he was charging $50 for an opt-out letter on signed stationary, the newspaper reported.
News of Warden’s offer spread across social media, leading to calls for him to be fired from his contracted position with Capital Regional Medical Center, where he was an emergency room physician.
The hospital subsequently cut ties with him.
“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 spokeswoman Rachel Stiles said in a statement to the Democrat.
“Immediately upon learning of this physician’s actions, we began the process of removing him from providing services to our hospital patients,” she said.
Warden defended his action in a Facebook post, arguing he was acting independently as a licensed medical doctor, the report said.
When reached by the newspaper, he texted: “I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to say anything.”
It wasn’t immediately clear if he sold any letters.