Calif. prison health care in shambles-report

California’s prison health-care system is at best in a “state of abject disrepair,” the receiver appointed by a U.S. judge to probe its workings reported on Wednesday.

In his first bimonthly report, court-appointed receiver Robert Sillen concluded California’s prison health-care system is in shambles.

“Almost every necessary element of a working medical care system either does not exist or functions in a state of abject disrepair,” Sillen wrote in a scathing 37-page report based on observations from tours of five state prisons.

Because the prison health system is such a mess, it may have to be stripped from the control of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Sillen said.

U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson appointed Sillen, the top health-care official in California’s Santa Clara County, in February to chart a course for overhauling the state’s prison health-care system.

Henderson’s order came as a result of a 2001 lawsuit claiming the state’s prisons failed to meet basic standards in treating sick prisoners.

Placing “band-aids on gaping wounds,” would only worsen the problem and lead to more waste of public resources, Sillen wrote.

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