Prison Receiver Issues Pay Raises To Fight Vacancies
Last week, California's prison medical receiver Robert Sillen ordered salary increases for the 1,500 doctors and nurses working in the state's prison health care system, the AP/Sacramento Bee reports.
Sillen was authorized by U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson to raise doctors' salaries to a maximum of $300,000.
Physician salaries will be raised between 8% and 20% in December, to about $250,000. Medical administrators also will see a pay raise and will earn as much as $285,000.
The pay raise is the second in 2007 for prison physicians. Sillen said the first hike, in March, only helped fill 226 of the corrections system's 370 physician positions, the AP/Bee reports.
About 1,100 of the prison vocational nurses also will see a 10% pay raise statewide, and nurses in the Bay Area will see a 21% raise because of an acute shortage, Rachael Kagan, Sillen's spokesperson, said (Thompson, AP/Sacramento Bee, 11/16).
Other raises include:
- Board-certified physicians can now earn $248,170;
- Chief physicians and surgeons can earn $256,856;
- Regional medical directors can earn up to $275,150; and
- The statewide medical director can earn up to $284,780, the Bee's "Capitol Alert" reports (Furrillo, "Capitol Alert," Sacramento Bee, 11/16).
The physician raises will cost the state between $10 million and $12 million annually once all vacant positions are filled, Kagan said.
H.D. Palmer, spokesperson for the Department of Finance, said that this year's raises will come from a $125 million contingency fund that was allocated for Sillen's needs. However, future costs will have to be added to the projected $10 billion budget deficit.
Sillen's plan for improving the state prison health system also includes millions of dollars for new health facilities, equipments and projects (AP/Sacramento Bee, 11/16).
