Dean Florez Senate Majority Leader: Focused Healthcare

“You can’t stand for your convictions if you always stand with the crowd.”
-Dean Florez

Electronic Mammograms

It is time to implement all-electronic health records. Dean believes that those still holding back should consider how the Mammography Reporting System has streamlined many radiologists’ offices and allowed focus on the most important part of the job -- reading the images. With an electronic system like MRS, the radiologist is able to utilize voice recognition software to dictate notes directly into the patient file, cutting down or eliminating transcription errors. By utilizing digital images that are interfaced via the digital reading workstations, the system also ensures that the correct images are being viewed for each patient, which improves the overall quality of patient care. Dean says it’s time to implement these type of systems throughout the health care field.

Clean Hospital Report Cards

One out of 20 patients in a hospital contracts an infection within the hospital itself. State dollars and resources have to be focused on the front-line of responding to infectious diseases and outbreaks. As Lt. Governor, Dean will launch a Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID) that will force healthcare facilities to clean up the mess that has festered for decades. Dean believes that MediCal, Medicaid and private health plans should stop rewarding hospitals which have unusually high, risk-adjusted infection rates. If Californians need to be hospitalized, Dean wants them to know which hospital in their area has the lowest infection rate. Dean believes that publicly comparing hospital performance will motivate hospitals to improve to fight for positive hospital infection report cards. Secrecy has allowed the infection problem to fester too long.

Universal Coverage

Today, the number of uninsured in California is 6.6 million and is expected to grow by 20% until 2010. Nearly three-fourths of uninsured, non-elderly Californians are in working families, and over 80% of uninsured employees have no access to employment-based insurance because they did not work for an employer who offered benefits or were not eligible for benefits from their employer. Dean favors an Obama administration Universal Coverage system that forces insurance companies to accept all people, regardless of pre-existing conditions, income level or employment.

Autism Focus

This year more children will be diagnosed with autism than diabetes, cancer and AIDS combined. Increased awareness and diagnosis have brought a rise in autism numbers, and today autism is thought to be the fastest-growing serious developmental disability in the world. Finding the cause and addressing the effects of autism is a top priority for Dean. It is not enough to simply recognize this growing problem; rather, we need to make it a priority of our state health care spending.

Prison Health Costs

The 172,000 prisoners in California’s prison system would be the state's 28th largest city if they were in a central location instead of spread over 33 isolated locations, usually far from medical centers. A $10.3-billion operating budget has not stopped the medical problems of California prisoners. The 700 percent expansion in less than 10 years, and an aging and less healthy population guaranteed by prison terms, have seen those medical problems grow even faster than the inmate population. Rather than continued investment in long-deferred medical facilities, Dean will push for long-overdue technological changes within the prison system, including the use of telemedicine, which would allow distant doctors to make a diagnosis for prisoners using medical imaging devices and saving the costs to doctors and hospitals. In addition, Dean will require cost savings through bulk purchasing of common pharmaceuticals.

Dean authored legislation to stem the rise in hospital-acquired infections, which are increasingly virulent and resistant to antibiotics. Senate Bill 158 (2008) established a program within the Department of Public Health to oversee prevention efforts – including a mandatory safety plan for each hospital – and reporting of hospital-associated infections.

As nonprofit community health centers sought to expand their clinic networks into medically underserved areas to meet the needs of a growing number of uninsured people with no primary care physicians, they found the licensing division overwhelmed and necessary reviews by the Department of Health Services sometimes delayed by more than a year. Dean authored Assembly Bill 951 (2001), creating a Centralized Application Unit within DHS to speed the application review and clinic survey process, as well as establish routine departmental reviews of the program’s efficiency.

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