Health Care Services in California Prisons
* The recent deaths of three women at the Central California Women’s Facility were among seven in [a little over] the last month and 15 in the last year at the Chowchilla penitentiary (“Deaths of 3 Women in State Prison Probed,” Dec. 20). While the California Department of Corrections rates among the best in providing prison health care services (outperformed only by the federal Bureau of Prisons), class-action lawsuits over “shoddy” and “slipshod” health care management in our state prisons must be continuously addressed.
California last year spent $4 billion to operate its prison system, incarcerating 163,000 inmates, overseen by 46,000 employees. Within the prisons can be found state-licensed infirmaries, skilled nursing facilities and accredited hospitals and hospices. Licensed and qualified nurses, medical technical assistants, physicians and surgeons attend to inmates behind the walls.
What is needed to upgrade the health and medical care rendered to male and female inmates is: affiliation between prisons and medical centers, such as exists in L.A. County between the county jail system of the Sheriff’s Department and the County-USC Medical Center (which operates a jail ward for medical and surgical cases that require superior attention); periodic external reviews by expert panels of the California Medical Assn. and the California Nurses Assn.; and regular internal review and analysis by each prison’s health care services division to determine whether the medical services delivered meet community standards.
DANIEL M. ANZEL PhD
Professor Emeritus, Preventive
and Community Medicine
USC School of Medicine
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