PHOENIX — A federal judge has appointed someone to oversee the state prison health care system for the next five years and given her virtually unlimited rights to make changes in not just staffing but how the money is spent.
In a new order, Judge Roslyn Silver said the state failed to bring care for inmates up to constitutional standards despite various promises to do better to address the claims filed in the 2012 lawsuit and even having to pay multimillion-dollar fines since then. Those shortcomings, the judge said, include chronic understaffing, care that should be handled by doctors going to nurses, failing to make referrals of complex conditions, and “inadequate resources, including funding and facilities.”
“Accordingly, the court found that only a receiver with the powers and authority necessary to address each of the systemic failures would adequately remedy the failure of health care,” she wrote in tapping Annette Chambers-Smith — and directing the state to pay her $500,000 a year salary.
