The Texas Connection: "UC could oversee prison health" - Los Angeles Times

Image by Nate Mandos via Flickr

Here's more cross-breeding between California and Texas.  Dr. David Callender, UTMB's current president, came to us from California.  Dr. Kenneth Shine, UT's Executive Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs, came to us from California.  Texas sent over its former UT chancellor, Dr. Mark Yudof, and its former president of UTMB, Dr. John "Jack" Stobo.  Look at who's hiring a Texas company, nowadays, to consult with California officials to reduce the cost of prison care.  Also, look at who gets honorable mention in this excerpt from the LA Times' "UC Could Oversee Prison Health," none other than Jack Stobo himself:

The program, recommended by a Texas company that the state hired as a consultant, would be an effort to reduce, and ultimately end, oversight of California's prison medical care by federal courts.

After a receiver took control of the system in 2006, medical costs skyrocketed. They reached $2.5 billion a year, including mental health care, which the receiver does not control, and have since declined to $2.2 billion. But they remain far higher than in other states, according a report by NuPhysicia, the state's consultant. . . .

John Stobo, UC senior vice president for health sciences and services, said the university, which has not yet agreed to the plan, would be paid for the care it provided.

The really interesting part of all this, not discussed by the LA Times is that the company doing the consulting has intimate ties to the University of Texas Medical Branch as the following excerpt from a story titled "UTMB, Sanders Morris Harris Launch Telemedicine Company" in the Houston Business Journal reveals:

Dr. Glenn Hammack, executive director of UTMB's Electronic Health Network, will direct operations for NuPhysicia. UTMB physicians Oscar Boltinghouse and Michael J. Davis also will serve as senior leadership of NuPhysicia.

Now, let's look at how Dallas County inmates fared under Dr. Stobo's leadership as detailed in a Dallas Observer article titled "Paying the Piper."  An excerpt:

After the investigation, the county expected UTMB to pay for at least some of the costs stemming from Mims' lawsuit. In its 2002 contract with the county, the medical school agreed to "indemnify" the county in the event of any lawsuit stemming from their own mistakes. Allen Clemson, the administrator for the county and its top non-elected official, negotiated the contract and in a subsequent affidavit said that he thought UTMB agreed to be on the hook in the event of a case such as Mims'. But UTMB would later claim "sovereign immunity," which means that as a governmental entity, it is protected from most lawsuits. In other words, the indemnity clause to which UTMB agreed might as well have been worthless. Both Clemson and the District Attorney's Office, which also reviewed the contract, basically got duped by a medical school into thinking that they had some protection in such a case as Mims'.

Telemedicine no doubt has its place in modern health care & NuPhysicia will no doubt do a good job consulting, but with cutting costs the holy grail in California right now, Governor Schwarzenegger may well be setting himself up to pay the piper just as Dallas County did dealing with Stobo's UTMB. Let us hope that cutting costs won't be done at all costs. 

Good luck with that, California. 

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