Ronald J. Heromin, M.D. & Tampa Bay Wellness Centre
I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but in the last few months a new pain management clinic was opened in the strip mall behind our house called Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. For two and a half years, we’ve had no problems with the strip mall that is just over our fence. But in the last few months, that has changed.
On January 31st, a Saturday, Debi and I woke up to the sounds of chainsaws. I didn’t immediately realize from where the sound was coming, but soon realized that someone was cutting down all of the trees on the other side of our fence by the strip mall. No one had approached us about doing this. What’s more, the previous owner of the house who put in our fence, didn’t actually put the fence on our property line, but instead put the fence about 2 to 3 feet away from our property line because he didn’t want to cut down those trees. Ergo, the trees they were cutting down were actually at least partially our trees, on our property. I went out, stuck my head over the fence, and got the attention of the woman who was cutting down the trees. I mentioned to her that the trees were on my property, which immediately gave her pause. She was hired to cut them down and was told that they were on the property of the owner of the strip mall. She immediately went to talk to the person who had hired her to let him know that this was sketchy. He and another business owner then came around to my place where I was out talking with my neighbor, to apologize and try to smooth things over. A little late – the trees were already cut down!
Over the last month, with the trees gone, we’ve had several instances where people have been walking around in the alley behind the strip mall at 11:00 pm talking loudly or yelling. I went out there a couple of weeks ago after a guy had been talking loudly for over an hour at 11:00 pm and popped my head over our fence. I don’t know who he was, but he didn’t wait around – he dropped his phone and ran.
One other time over the past week there have been people talking loudly in the alley at night. But last night, at 11:00 pm, it was really getting on my nerves. Then a car alarm went off, waking up Toren. I’d had enough. I went into our backyard to see what was going on, but by that time no one was back there, despite there still being 6 or 7 cars in the alley. So I decided I’d walk around to the front of the strip mall to see what was going on.
I’m probably too naive to realize that this was very risky, but I was pissed. As I walked around the corner to the strip mall and started to head down the sidewalk, I started noticing a group of people hanging out in front of the Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. As I got closer, I realized these people were not really the kind of people I’d want to run into late at night – they were wearing tattered clothing, looked unkempt, looked to be in relatively poor health, had various scars, and looked, well, mean. Having no experience with drug dealers, I can’t say for certain that’s what they looked like, but that was the initial impression I received – white, scummy, drug dealers. There were about 6 or 7 of them standing in front of the Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. When I got to the door of this “clinic”, I started to ask the people sitting around outside if it was open, but then one of them opened the door and walked in, so I followed him. Inside, at 11:00pm on a Friday night, there were at least another 15 to 20 people sitting around a makeshift clinic, watching TV. They looked just like the people outside.
Cut into one wall was a window where I assumed the staff were. I waited while the guy who entered before me asked if he was up yet. Then it was my turn. In the little, unfinished, and really scary looking office, there were three people I could see – a young woman, a young man, and Gloria, a middle-aged woman. I started right in on them, complaining about the noise and wanting to know what was going on. Gloria was the one who piped up and denied that it was them, claiming that they didn’t let anyone back in the alley. BS! I mentioned the car alarm and told them I have an 8-month old son. She apologized, then said that they were going to be leaving in a week. When I asked why, the young man said, “Does it matter? You don’t want us to leave?” To which I responded, “No, you leaving would be great, but it just looks funny for you to set up shop for a month or two then leave.” Anyway, I ended up getting the card of the Doctor who supposedly runs the clinic and Gloria’s name, then warned her that I would start phoning in noise complaints to the police every time I heard them from now on. At this, one of the patrons said, “If you have a problem with this place, you can go talk to the police officer who is watching it from his cruiser in the parking lot over.” I told him I just might.
I walked out to glares from some of the patrons, then headed back the way I came. I did notice as I walked that there was a Tampa Police cruiser in the parking lot opposite the clinic as the patron said, so I went over to the cruiser to see what was going on. I think he was a bit wary at first, but when I introduced myself and explained what I was doing, he relaxed and we started to chat. He was, in fact, observing this “clinic” because the police are fairly confident that what is happening is that the doctor is simply writing whatever patients walk in prescriptions for narcotics and painkillers. My neighbor and I had guessed this was what was happening, but to hear the police confirm that it was the suspicion was surprising, especially because the officer said there was nothing they could do at this point. That annoyed me because the local police recently busted a bunch of people in the Tampa area doing just this. As we talked, the officer was amazed to hear that I had gone into the clinic. He was also amazed that it was open at 11:00pm on a Friday night. He kept saying, “I don’t know of any doctor’s offices that are open that late at night.” Anyway, the officer was nice and did confirm that I could call in noise complaints after 11:00 whenever they occurred. So, I’ll be doing that.
But I also decided to look into things a bit more this morning. Here’s what my internet sleuthing has discovered:
Ronald J. Heromin
Ronald J. Heromin is the doctor who is running the Tampa Bay Wellness Centre. He is licensed in Florida. However, he was been disciplined by the Florida Board of Medicine, on April 4, 2009, for beginning to operate on a patient’s wrong leg. (You can see a copy of the discipline decision here as well.) Unfortunately that only ended in a $5,000 fine. Dr. Heromin has also recently filed for bankruptcy with close to $150,000 in debt. This sounds like the perfect recipe for a doctor to start slumming it, doling out prescriptions for narcotics. I, of course, cannot say that Dr. Heromin is doing that, but his clinic is certainly sketchy. The clientèle were sketchy. And staying open late at night on a Friday doling out prescriptions in a clinic that, from my quick purview, doesn’t even have a room to see patients seems really, really sketchy. So, I don’t know what Dr. Heromin is doing, but it’s not above reproach.
Because I don’t want to keep the card I took that night any longer, I’m posting all of the information it included here:
Tampa Bay Wellness Centre
Office of Ronald J. Heromin, M.D.
1943 W. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607
Phone: (813) 374-8950
Fax: (813) 374-8949
Ettinberg Properties, LLC & Haim Goldenberg
The owner of the strip mall where Tampa Bay Wellness Centre is located is Haim Goldenberg, the registered agent of Ettinberg Properties, LLC. Here’s the property tax information on the property, which says it is worth $1.4 million. And here’s the corporate information on Ettinberg Properties, LLC. Apparently he’s living quite well – here’s a picture of his home courtesy of Google Maps. It’s 2009 market value is $688,764.00. He’s also the registered agent of Universal Auto Leasing Inc. at 8542 N Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa, FL 33614, which looks like some strange car rental or leasing location. I’d laugh if this also happens to be Haim Goldenberg, the famed Israeli mentalist, but I doubt it.
This whole ordeal has hurt me plenty I have back pain due to a car accident and I found a place that will give me the medication that I need to take not to sell and i finally save up enough money to get it but they won’t take an old mri I spent my last $300 on a mri from the trailer out back and since this raid I can’t even find out where my medical records are or who read my mri. I feel this crackdown has directly hurt me I am out my last 300 I can’t get my records and now can’t afford another mri or prescription and I have never broken any law. It may not seem like such a lofty problem such as health care reform, DEA investigations, or political kickbacks from pill manufacturers but this does hurt the individual patient. If anyone has any information on the GE mobile MRI that was out back please post it.
frustrateundermedicated,
I’m sorry that you’re being negatively affected by this. But I think your case perfectly illustrates the problem here. Tampa Bay Wellness Center was clearly not “legitimate.” If they were, you wouldn’t be in this situation. If they were legitimate, they would not have been raided. And, you’d still have your MRIs. They also clearly didn’t track medical records as they just cared about the money, not the patients.
I hate to use your case to illustrate the problems with these illegitimate pain clinics, but that’s exactly what has happened. The few legitimate patients they had are now screwed.
The truck was apparently part of “Macron Medical Technologies,” 2129 W. Martin Luther King Blvd., another property owned and operated by Mark Fernandez (like Tampa Bay Wellness Center and VIP Pharmacy) and another property “raided,” as told in the news reports, and shut down by the DEA. If you needed to acquire your MRI from this location in order to procure medication, you most likely do not need such medications, and your health would truly be best served by staying away from them. The MRI unit was well-known for making certain adjustments to results, allowing the staff inside to prescribe massive amounts of Schedule II narcotics to all comers. Macron Medical Technologies does not offer any correlative imagery whatsoever to authenticate their MRI process to actual professionals.
Your results may never have been physically produced, depending on the timing, or perhaps they are in an evidence locker somewhere. Either way, I would not anticipate recouping your $300 loss. Maybe you should contact TPD about the matter. If you are truly in need of treatment, please, seek out a professional doctor who will actually engage you in your care, and not a pill mill. My last visit to Tampa Bay Wellness Center did not even actually include a doctors’ visit. I was handed prescriptions written out by a doctor whom I have never met. That was my last visit to the clinic–I had originally sought open-mindedness, not sleaziness. If you have proper documentation and a clean criminal record, dealing with that kind of dirt is completely unnecessary. Since then I have found a wonderful, clean doctor who is intent on keeping me healthy with as little cost to my wallet and body as possible. If your “old” MRI indicates a serious, painful condition, most LEGITIMATE doctors will accept that for the first visit. When you go to a place like Tampa Bay Wellness Center, you get sent to the truck. Seriously people, how many Ph.D.-level professionals do you know that choose to work out of semis? Use your brains, please.
When you are willing to engage in the fraud, price gouging, and wait-times associated with treatment at Tampa Bay Wellness Center in order to receive narcotic prescriptions, it opens a very simple psychological interpretation of drug-seeking behavior. The prescriptions that came out of that facility went far, far above and beyond most individuals’ pain management needs, even among opiod-tolerant individuals. If you are a legitimate patient for pain management, please, help advance the interests of others in your boat and the interests of your own well-being by seeing a doctor who actually has a role to play in your treatment and whose goal is to help you live a life free of pain and addiction. If you do not need pain management, please, for the sake of your own health and for the health of those who DO suffer from severe pain, do not allow yourself to become an addict at the hands of money-grubbing fiends like these. You do yourself, the system, and most of all those who suffer a great disservice. If you are not suffering, if you are not abusing, and if you are not selling, how exactly can oxycodone/OxyContin make your life better? The short answer is that it can’t.
HenryTudor,
Thanks for the well-written comment.
Any suggestions for legitimate doctors people like “frustrateundermedicated” can visit?”
I highly recommend Dr. VanDercar on Fletcher Avenue. He is highly qualified and formerly ran pain management at Tampa General Hospital. The website for his clinic is at http://www.tampapainclinic.com/. Furthermore, the first visit is only $125, much less than many other clinics (most charge $250-$300, cash only, for the initial visit). I have heard that Tampa Pain Relief on Habana is also a quality clinic but I know much less about it. Shiloh Medical Group (http://www.shilohhealth.com/) on North Dale Mabry run a very nice clinic as well. Each of these locations do a requisite urinary analysis on new patients, a practice which was conveniently lacking at Tampa Bay Wellness Center.
There are other options all over Tampa. If you truly need pain management, invest some time in yourself and do some research. As I stated earlier, your doctor’s concern should be to keep your life free of pain AND addiction; they are not mutually exclusive. If a doctor isn’t concerned about the tolerance and dependence dimensions of pain management, they simply aren’t doing their job.
ur mri was sent to a place called bayview radiology thats where my friend got hers from so i would try that sorry u had to loose so much money my friend did too and she has cancer of the stomache but now she goes to a cancer ceter so thins worked out 4 her@frustrateundermedicated
I never thought the corruption was that substantial I could tell by my visit to the property that it seemed some people were there strictly to abuse the system. However when I looked around I saw mostly people that looked like they themselves fell into the same trap many others from all stations of life have, becoming addicted to a substance that was prescribed to you by a Doctor. I thank those who left the comments about my situation for there suggestions and hope to face my own personal demons. It just troubles me that after reading some of the comments left on this blog that so many would not only lack the compassion for people struggling with there addiction but go as far to judge them. I am not the most christian person in the world but I heard somewhere that only God should judge so I would encourage anyone pointing any fingers at Doctors, Nurses, politicians, the people who run that clinic, the patients, or even those who it seems are abusing the system that we all have our vices and our imperfections and time spent arguing over others choices in life is probably better spent on self examination. I will still hold to the hope that this place wasn’t 100% fraudulant and someone can give me the name of a doctor that was reading these MRI’s especially since it seems that only 1 person was arrested.
There are a lot of rogue pain clinics out there. Some doctors are in financial problems and will lower their standard to make quick money. A lot of investors are opening pain clinics. This people are not medical professional and their motivation is money not ethics. My advise is to research the clinic and the owners and make sure that they are medical professionals. Check the department of health website and make sure that the doctor has no disciplinary issues or been to a drug treatment program. I will suggest to you to see Dr Luis Merced at 11531 N. 56th St, Temple Terrace, Phone number 813-549-7465. Their initial visit is $100 with coupon. They do not take out of state patients. You may also try Dr Vandecar on Fletcher. Good Luck.
They made a big stink like they made some huge bust but only one person got arrested out of these three locations and he is not the owner or doc so if there was some big illegal drug dealing going on how come no one was arrested everyone keeps saying they got videos and the dea was watching the place there’s this blog but some how the fernandez fam and heromin are still out and probably operating so all the tv hype is just that hype make the public think there tax dollars are hard at work when really the cops are pissin in the wind selling the public some super hero image and really aint doing shit but hey as long as ryan gets his trees fixed and toren can sleep its all good. Just seems funny no major arrests those agents wasted all that time and money and arrested one guy from vip great job boys in blue what an impact!!
Big Daddy Lo- They are not even close to being done. We have all worked so hard on this, and take it from me, as I am personally involved. This will not stop until all is arrested. The arresting procedure has many steps, but the prosecuting steps are more and more detailed if we want these charges to carry any weight when the time for sentencing comes. Dr. Ronald Heromin, the VIP staff or Marc and his entire family (all the medical and office staff at 2137) are not the only ones being looked at. This is a mulit county investigation.
@big daddy lo
I hate to admit it, big daddy lo, but you have a point. One arrest out of the raid seems quite underwhelming. And it seems like now that the place is shut down (more likely just moved somewhere else), the media hype is gone and nothing is going to come of this. I have heard from various sources that more arrests may be forthcoming as it takes time to build these cases, but I’ll believe that when I see it. Until then, the impression you get is that maybe, just maybe, Tampa Bay Wellness Centre, VIP Pharmacy, and Macron Medical were all working within the law. I’d hate to think that’s the case, but maybe it’s true. If so, the law definitely needs to be changed.
Oh, and big daddy lo, I haven’t been reimbursed for my destroyed trees or fence. I’d sure like to be, but ever since the raid, no one has wanted to talk to me about it. I guess now that the money isn’t flowing in, no one is willing to pay for the damage done to my property. But I will say this – things are a lot more quite around here, like they used to be. And, yes, Toren can sleep again at night. Are you suggesting that’s a bad thing?
Heromin get him
???? Heromin get him??? Get Who? Are you threating someone? If so grow some balls and says what you want…
@frustrateundermedicated
I THINK YOU HAVE A GOOD POINT NO ONE SHOULD JUDGE ….PAIN IS SOMETHING SOME CAN TAKE AND OTHER CAN’T IT MIGHT BE CONTROL BY SOME AND MIGHT TAKE ALITTLE MORE TO CONTROL FOR OTHERS YOU DON’T KNOW HOW ANYONE FELL CAUSE YOU DO NOT WALK IN THEIR SHOES AND FELL THEIR PAIN SO MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS AND LIVE AND LET LIVE….
Heromin is working out of a semi that way he should be locked up and his lisence removed !!!!! ????? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!