Lauren Sweeney

We shop online for everything from clothes to cars and can compare pricing before committing, so a Naples surgeon wants to make that same approach available to medical care. Dr. Michael Havig, an orthopedic surgeon at Naples Orthopedics and Sports Medicine, said he came up with the idea after hearing his staff turn away patients […]

Insurance companies cover preventative care as an incentive for you to stay on top of your health; however, there is fine print for these so-called free exams and procedures with health care providers. A viewer from Fort Myers contacted WINK News’ Cost of Care after getting an unexpected $240 bill at what was supposed to […]

COVID-19 has affected nearly every aspect of our lives over the last year. Now, it’s about to leave a lot of people with unexpected medical bills. But knowledge is key to avoid the sticker shock of a massive bill. At the start of the pandemic, many insurance companies were waiving all out-of-pocket costs related to […]

The family of a 9-year-old girl with autism is considering legal action against the City of North Port after a January incident where police grabbed the girl and put her into the back of a police car. The girl’s mother, McKenna Smith, called 911 after her daughter ran away, something she has done. When the […]

A Lee County sheriff’s detective is questioning a prosecutor’s decision not to charge James Taylor with the homicide of a man who drunkenly attempted to get into his home in 2016.  Ryan Modell, 32, was drunk and mistakenly tried to enter Taylor’s condominium at the Emerson Square development on Old Harmony Drive in south Fort Myers on March 20, 2016.  A year later, prosecutors with the […]

Karen Lawson was surprised when her doctor’s office told her she had a $500 charge for her bi-annual bone density shot. Lawson spent her life working in medical billing, so she considers herself pretty sharp when it comes to understanding her medical costs. “It was my understanding that Medicare was going to cover it and […]

Randy Henderson said he’ had never broken a bone or spent a night in the hospital before he crashed his bicycle into a bridge in December 2019. Henderson, the former mayor of Fort Myers, spent three nights in the hospital with a cracked rib and a collapsed lung. He agreed to let WINK News look […]

It was a route he’d taken thousands of times on his bicycle. The weather was clear and bright. Then the unexpected happened. Randy Henderson’s handlebars got caught on the side of a fence on a bridge along MacGregor Boulevard and down he went into the pavement. Henderson, who was Mayor of the city at the […]

It will take another 15 weeks to get shots in the arms of the rest of Florida’s 65 and older population if supply does not increase, according to a Florida Gulf Coast University Mathematics Professor. Senthil Balaji Girimurugan, Ph.D., a statistical researcher and math professor, compared the state’s weekly allotment numbers against population data from […]

Susan Leslie was elated to get the COVID vaccine weeks before she expected. She got her first dose in mid-January through a major hospital system in Central Texas. But that excitement turned to disappointment when she was asked to pay a $51 charge for the shot administration. “I really got angry, and I think that’s […]