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| Prison doctors sue to block higher standards |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 05/09/2005 |
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The union representing prison doctors sued the California Department of Corrections to block higher standards for physicians, blaming appalling health care problems on an inferior prison system. The Oakland-based Union of American Physicians and Dentists said last Monday its doctors are not responsible for the problems. The Department of Corrections wants doctors to be board certified in internal medicine or family practice, or pass a competency test. The plan follows a series of scathing reports on health care at state prisons. National experts reported last month that conditions are so poor that inmates are dying of neglect and maltreatment. The suit filed April 29 in Sacramento County Superior Court said imposing new minimum qualification standards violates state law, which requires that any new qualifications must be approved by the State Personnel Board. The board now requires only that doctors and dentists be licensed in California. A department spokesman, Todd Slosek, said the department was bound by a court order stemming from the settlement of an inmate lawsuit to make sure its doctors provide adequate medical care. "The evaluation is designed to ensure that the department has competent physicians that can provide a constitutional level of care to the inmate population," Slosek said. The department has twice tried to impose such standards under what the union alleged were flawed evaluation programs. The union said no correctional agency in the nation requires its doctors to prove their competency. The Department of Corrections is "arbitrarily, capriciously, and unilaterally imposing new minimum qualifications for prison doctors to divert attention from its own execrable management spanning two decades," the union said in a statement. "In a desperate last ditch effort to divert attention from its own colossal mismanagement, CDC is doing its best to blame prison doctors for its own failures." |
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