The Bee' s Charles Piller reports:
From July 2008 to May this year, the state spent $152 million on registry clinicians, including a top rate of $527 per hour for a doctor at San Quentin State Prison. If state employees had done the work, $22 million could have been saved in a year of dire budget cuts, layoffs and furloughs.
That $152 million total does not include payments to temporary psychiatrists, dentists and other registry staff whose services were not overseen by J. Clark Kelso, the federal receiver appointed about two years ago to clean up a history of deadly prison health care lapses.
Click here to read the second of two parts on state prison medical staffing in today's Bee. This link will take you to part 1 of the investigation.
And this story from West Virginia's Charleston Daily Mail caught our eye:
Thousands of state employees have received e-mails informing them they will soon have to outline in detail what they do on the job every day.
The state is in the process of updating its classification and compensation plans. Department of Administration spokeswoman Diane Holley-Brown said the systems, which are used to organize and describe jobs in state government and ensure salaries are fair and competitive, are severely outdated.
You'll find Sara Gavin's report under our "Recommended Links" on the right side of this page.
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