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| County health care program for inmates mismanaged |
| By NORBERTO SANTANA JR. and TONY SAAVEDRA - The Orange County Register |
| Published: 02/27/2009 |
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OC, CA - The county Health Care Agency severely mismanaged a $36 million program providing medical care for jail inmates, an internal report has found. The study concluded that the jail program is rife with conflicts of interest. Meanwhile, contracts with hospitals and doctors are so poorly monitored that the county is unable to determine how nearly $10 million in medical service charges was spent. Problems within the Correctional Medical Services program have festered for numerous years despite heated complaints from nurses and union officials. Those complaints garnered headlines two years ago when the Orange County Register published an investigation into an alleged lack of training among jail nurses as well as other mismanagement following the jailhouse death of Michael Patrick Lass in October 2007. The next year, the county grand jury also criticized the jail medical program in a report entitled, "Man down. Will he get up?" "Nothing can be done. Nothing will change," is the mantra that county auditors heard repeatedly during the study, which began in October 2008 and will be presented next month to county supervisors. "It makes you wonder what planet these executives are on. They're orbiting in a hemisphere that has no daylight," said Nick Berardino, general manager for the Orange County Employees Association. "The county's approach to any problem has been a bunker mentality," Berardino said. "They try to hide things as opposed to looking for solutions." County Supervisor John Moorlach, who had just begun reading the report, called its conclusions, "troubling." Performance Auditor Steve Danley wrote that inmates were receiving medical treatment, despite an environment "laden with management, operational and administrative deficiencies." Auditors have suggested a series of improvements – many already underway -- that they believe could save more than $3 million each year. While health care agency officials said they recognized and appreciated the work done by the audit team, they questioned whether the savings cited in the report were realistic. HCA Spokesman Howard Sutter said a large part of the challenge is providing health care in a jail environment as well as recruiting good hires. Funding for the program has soared over the past decade, from $19.1 million in 2000 to $36 million in 2008. Read more. If link has expired, check the website of the article's original news source. |
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