Submit your claim details for a free, no obligation case review.
Get Started:
Medical lapses in the California prison system may have caused as many as one in six deaths last year, according to a new report on medical care in 32 lockup facilities throughout the state.
Preventable Deaths
Last year, 426 inmates died in California prisons. The study looked at 381 of those deaths and found 18 to be preventable and 48 more to be “possibly preventable.” Six of those considered preventable were from asthma.
“The leading cause of [preventable] death being asthma is unconscionable, and it is evidence of systemic problems and problems with individual clinical judgments,” said Robert Sillen, a court-appointed receiver in charge of prisoner healthcare.
A System Fraught with Problems
Delays and failures in diagnoses and limited inmate access to doctors were among causes of preventable deaths identified in the report, which revealed a prison medical system rife with problems including staff shortages and poor handling of medical records.
Sillen, a former Santa Clara County health official, said the report confirms the need for a total rebuilding of the state’s medical care system. In 2001, a judge appointed Sillen to run the system and bring inmate care up to constitutional standards.
Fixing the System
The judge’s action was in response to a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of prisoners by the Prison Law Office in the Bay Area. The lawsuit alleged substandard inmate care.
Steve Fama, one of the attorneys working on behalf of the inmates, praised the thoroughness of the report as well as its timeliness.
“It is very important that was done not only to provide a baseline but also to identify factors that can be addressed to reduce the number of preventable deaths and the other lapses in care. Unfortunately at some prisons, the number of physicians available is nowhere near sufficient to meet the need for doctors’ appointments,” he said.
According to Dr. Steven Bussey, president of the Union of American Physicians and Dentists, prison doctors are working in a “battlefield situation” where they “do not have the tools to practice good medicine.”
That the prison medical system needs overhauling is a fact on which most agree. Of the preventable deaths last year, one involved an inmate who died of acute pancreatitis after his complaints of severe abdominal pain went ignored. Another involved a prisoner who waited eight hours to see a doctor after complaining of chest pains.
(Source: Los Angeles Times online)
Victim of medical malpractice? Contact an experienced attorney today for a free consultation.