Prison Health Care Receiver Unveils Road Map to Reform
California's prison medical receiver Robert Sillen on Thursday filed a plan in federal court that provides a road map for overhauling the state's prison system and returning oversight to the state officials, the Los Angeles Times reports (Warren/Reiterman, Los Angeles Times, 5/11).
The plan was filed with U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson (Richman, Oakland Tribune, 5/11). Henderson last year appointed Sillen to oversee health care reforms to state prisons, where one inmate was dying almost weekly because of medical negligence or malpractice (California Healthline, 4/24).
Sillen has estimated that it could take up to 20 years before control of the prisons could be returned to state officials. Sillen said his plan is "comprehensive, responsible and best of all, achievable" (Oakland Tribune, 5/11).
The plan calls for:
- Creating SWAT teams to respond to medical crises;
- Specialized care for elderly inmates;
- Medical scorecards for each prison;
- A pain management initiative (Los Angeles Times, 5/11);
- Dividing the prison system into regions of three to five prisons each and delegating oversight of each region to teams of clinicians and administrators;
- Creating an electronic health record system for every inmate patient and sharing the data wirelessly among prisons and departments;
- Providing inmates with better escort, transportation and access to health care inside and outside the prisons; and
- Determining how many more medical beds are necessary at all 33 prisons (Oakland Tribune, 5/11).
Sillen also outlined proposals for recruiting and retaining physicians, including paying off medical school loans and deploying chartered planes to fly urban practitioners to rural prisons several days a week.
Gary Robinson, executive director of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, said the physician vacancy rate is 40%, despite efforts by Sillen last year to raise the salaries.
Sillen's plan did not provide a cost estimate, but legislative analysts predict that his proposals will cost more than $3 billion over the next five years (Los Angeles Times, 5/11).
Bill Maile, a spokesperson for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), said the governor "looks forward to working with Mr. Sillen to make significant progress as soon as possible" (Oakland Tribune, 5/11).
Sillen listed prison reform legislation (AB 900) signed into law last week as one of the "barriers" to his plan. He added that the bill did not provide benchmarks to measure his progress (Furillo, Sacramento Bee, 5/11).
Sillen on Tuesday will file a report on the effect of prison overcrowding on his efforts to reform the health care system, according to the Tribune (Oakland Tribune, 5/11).
"If there is a weakness to (Sillen's) plan, it is that it does not include a corresponding dollar figure for the prison health care cure," a San Jose Mercury News editorial states. "The state should embrace (Sillen's) steps to provide California's prison health system with acceptable standards," according to the editorial.
"And [the state] should also begin the process of estimating the eventual costs so that it can begin the painful process of paying the needed price for its past transgressions," the editorial concludes (San Jose Mercury News, 5/11).
Capital Public Radio's "KXJZ News" on Thursday reported on Sillen's plan. The segment includes comments from Sillen (Russ, "KXJZ News," Capital Public Radio, 5/10).
A transcript and audio of the segment are available online.
In addition, KPCC's "KPCC News" on Friday reported on the plan.
The segment includes comments from Sillen and Sen. Mike Machado (D-Stockton) (Small, "KPCC News," KPCC, 5/11).
A transcript and audio of the segment are available online.