Regional officials say organization lost $2M in revenue
By Ryan Sabalow
Record Searchlight
REDDING, Calif. — Administrators at Shasta Regional Medical Center say they’ve seen a $2 million drop in revenue because state prison inmates in Susanville, who once were bused to the Redding hospital for care, are now being shipped to Reno.
“The bigger question is why they’re spending California dollars outside the state when there seems to be no compelling reason to do so,” Shasta Regional CEO Phil Dionne said Wednesday.
But Susanville inmates have been sent to Reno for treatment for years, said Richard Kirkland, a spokesman for the California Prison Health Care Receivership Corp.
“This isn’t some new phenomenon,” Kirkland said.
A prison’s health care providers, Kirkland said, decide where to send a sick inmate based on factors such as the amount of hospital bed space available, the inmate’s condition and whether the hospital specializes in treating their ailments.
Susanville’s prisons, High Desert State Prison and California Correctional Center, aren’t the only ones to send inmates out of state. Kirkland said inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison on California’s north coast occasionally are sent to Oregon for care.
But Shasta Regional officials say it doesn’t make sense for inmates in Susanville to be shipped out of state for medical care, since it’s only 35 miles farther to bus inmates to Redding than it is to a Renown Health system hospital in Reno.
In addition, if an inmate is released from prison and needs follow-up care, he or she wouldn’t be able to get treatment in Nevada because MediCal payments aren’t accepted there, said Dr. Lloyd Pena, a Shasta Regional emergency medicine physician.
Pena said that means many of the tests and procedures completed in Nevada would have to be repeated in California at the taxpayers’ expense.
“These are hidden costs you’re never going to see,” Pena said.
Since 2006, the hospital has had a contract with the state’s prison system to send inmates once a month for outpatient cardiac care; another clinic specialized in outpatient orthopedic work, said Dwight Redd, a registered nurse who serves as the hospital’s liaison with the prison system.
The contract also stated that inmates were to be treated at the hospital for inpatient care.
Dionne said the contract the hospital signed didn’t guarantee a set number of patients.
Even so, Redd said the hospital’s clinics at first treated a sizeable number of inmates.
From June to December 2006, some 92 patients were treated in the orthopedic clinic alone, and the next year the number jumped to about 227, Redd said.
But toward the end of 2007 and in the first part this year, the number of inmate patients dropped to near none. So far in 2008, one clinic in January treated 21 inmate patients, he said.
No inmates have been treated in February or March. The hospital has lost at least $2 million, said Suzie Wood, the hospital’s marketing director.
Wood said she tried to call the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to find out why the inmates stopped being sent to Shasta Regional for care, but she has not received an answer.
Kirkland said when the prison’s health care administrators sign a contract with a hospital, the guarantees generally cover only costs for procedures - not the number of inmates receiving care.
He said that since there are no guarantees about where patients will be sent, “there’s been an ebb and flow of usage between one place or another” that has nothing to do with a change in policy.
Meanwhile, Shasta Regional administrators say they still have to set aside patient rooms and schedule health care workers and extra security staff on the days the inmates are supposed to arrive, but they can’t be sure there will be any patients to treat.
Shasta Regional’s troubles could be the latest symptom in the state’s ailing prison health care system.
In February 2006, a federal judge ordered that the California Prison Health Care Receivership Corp. take over the CDCR’s health care system after ruling that medical care at California’s prisons fell well below constitutional standards and state legislators weren’t fixing the problems.
The receiver reports directly to federal Judge Thelton E. Henderson of the U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.
Receiver Robert Sillen was appointed in April 2006 after Henderson found that the prison health care system was so bad that inmates often died because of malpractice or neglect.
But in January, Henderson pulled Sillen from the post after it was discovered that the receivership over-billed state taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars for benefits and travel expenses.
Sillen was paid more than $775,000 before Henderson replaced him in January with Sacramento law professor J. Clark Kelso.
William Bird, spokesman for State Sen. Sam Aanestad, said Wednesday was the first the senator had heard about Shasta Regional’s inmates being shipped out of state for care. He contacted the receiver’s office Wednesday to find out why, Bird said.
“He asked for records from both facilities and cost breakdowns to see ... what the justification is to spend California tax dollars in Reno,” Bird said. “He wants to see records first before he makes any kind of a judgement.”
Aanestad, R-Grass Valley, is vice chair of the senate’s health committee.
Reporter Ryan Sabalow can be reached at 225-8344 or at rsabalow@redding.com
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 Record Searchlight