The New York Times-20080124-Judge Replaces State Overseer Of Health Care For Prisoners
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Judge Replaces State Overseer Of Health Care For Prisoners
A federal judge who ruled in 2005 that California's broken prison medical care system amounted to cruel and unusual punishment in many cases dismissed on Wednesday the receiver who had been appointed to repair the system.
A federal court took control of the prison health care system away from the state in 2005 after ruling in favor of a class-action lawsuit brought by the Prison Law Office, an advocacy group, on behalf of California inmates.
Robert Sillen, a hospital administrator, was appointed the health care receiver for the prison system in April 2006, after a nationwide search.
Mr. Sillen's no-nonsense, confrontational style of leadership helped to push forward short-term changes and address immediate needs, according to the court order issued on Wednesday by the judge, Thelton E. Henderson of Federal District Court.
But the court found the changes Mr. Sillen proposed in an outline of long-term reforms he submitted for review in May, to be too conceptual and lacking a clear plan for being carried out.
In June, the Prison Law Office filed a complaint in federal court saying that Mr. Sillen's proposed changes had no concrete details of how any of the goals or objectives are to be accomplished, no real timelines and no metrics.
Judge Henderson appointed J. Clarke Kelso, a professor at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific in Sacramento, as the new receiver.
Mr. Kelso has a history of taking over agencies plagued by disorganization or suffering from poor reputation.
He served as interim state insurance commissioner after the departure of Chuck Quackenbush amid corruption accusations in 2000 and unified the state's disparate information and technology departments while serving as chief information officer in 2002.
Rachael Kagan, director of communications for the receivership, said Mr. Sillen would not comment on his removal.
The role of receiver has reached a critical juncture, Judge Henderson wrote, and requires a more diplomatic style of leadership that will coordinate multiple state agencies to alter the medical care system and, ultimately, return it to state control.
While the current receiver has successfully used his unique skills and bold, creative leadership style to investigate, confront and break down many of the barriers that existed at the inception of the receivership, the order said, the second phase of the receivership demands a substantially different set of administrative skills and style of collaboration.
With the oversight of a newly created advisory board, Mr. Kelso will work to create a new plan over the next two months.
In the next 45 to 60 days, we will be taking what is an extremely voluminous set of plans created by Mr. Sillen and turning it into a strategic business plan that people can get their arms around and gives us a sense of what it would cost to implement, Mr. Kelso said.
I need to get on my feet as quickly as possible, he added. We don't want to lose momentum in some sort of grand transition.
