Kelso: Separate Prison Health Care From Corrections Dept.

To improve California's medical care for inmates, "we need to formally remove the operational part of prison health care from the management of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation by establishing an organizationally separate, board-governed health care authority," J. Clark Kelso, the state's federally appointed receiver for prison health care, writes in a Sacramento Bee opinion piece. Kelso adds that over the last 18 months, he has led an effort that "implemented substantial changes to improve quality of care" for inmates "while simultaneously reducing unnecessary costs."

• "Split Off Health Care From Prisons Agency" (Kelso, Sacramento Bee, 9/14).