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Health czar to order new prison medical facilities

By DON THOMPSON, | Tuesday, Sep 19 2006 4:15 PM

Last Updated: Tuesday, Sep 19 2006 4:15 PM

The federal receiver in charge of inmate health care in California prisons said Tuesday that he will order construction of new prison medical facilities on his own after lawmakers failed to act during a special session last month.

Robert Sillen said he will seek space for 500 emergency beds within six months and a total of 5,000 new beds in five years.

He said the beds are needed to improve a health care system that kills an average of an inmate a week through neglect or malpractice.

Sillen and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked lawmakers to approve two new prisons for inmates with medical or mental health problems. But lawmakers adjourned until after the November election without acting on Schwarzenegger's $6 billion plan to ease crowding in the nation's largest state prison system.

"We're going to have a ribbon cutting within three to five years. Whether that can be done through the state, I doubt it" because of bureaucratic inertia, Sillen said in a telephone interview. "If the state won't sell the revenue bonds for it, then we'll go into the general fund and take it from there."

He is hiring consultants to plan the additional facilities, Sillen said Tuesday in his second report to U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson.

Sillen took control in April of health care in the 33-prison system, after Henderson ruled that conditions were so poor they were unconstitutional.

The state has been open all along to building more medical facilities and is awaiting Sillen's specific plans, said spokesmen for legislative leaders and the administration.

It is the second time in a week that Sillen said he will use the power of a federal judge to bypass inaction by state officials. A week ago, Sillen asked Henderson to boost some health care workers' salaries by as much as 64 percent, at a cost to the state of as much as $24 million a year.

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