Daily Report

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Better access to primary health care and prevention programs could have kept thousands of California adults out of hospitals, according to a new statewide analysis.

According to new data released last week by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, there were more than 335,000 adult hospitalizations in California that could have been avoided if the patient had seen a doctor sooner.

According to the state agency, so-called “preventable hospitalizations” are an indication of systemic shortcomings related to access to quality primary care.

“These are people going into the hospital that probably shouldn’t be if they were getting good primary care up front,” said Michael Kassis, a research specialist with the office.

Poor environmental factors and a failure to follow medical treatment also could prompt these avoidable hospital stays, the agency said.

The latest figures are based on an analysis of 2009 hospital inpatient discharges by state-licensed facilities of 13 “prevention quality indicators,” or readily treatable medical conditions such as chest pains and dehydration...

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California's recently formed Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education has significant weaknesses in its oversight of for-profit colleges, advocacy groups told lawmakers at a hearing this week.

The agency's lax approach limits its ability to police abuses in the for-profit sector, said Jamienne S. Studley, CEO of Public Advocates Inc., a nonprofit law firm and advocacy group in San Francisco.

During the joint information hearing of the Assembly Higher Education Committee and Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development, Studley recommended that the bureau strengthen its approval process, demand more disclosures from approved institutions, verify information received from colleges and more.

Nationally, for-profit colleges have the highest share of students who default on their student loans. The sector enrolls 1 in 10 college students in California, but receives more Cal Grant dollars from the state than all the community colleges combined.

A 2010 report from the College Board shows the six-year graduation rate for first-time, full-time students is 22 percent at four-year for-profit colleges, compared with 55 percent at public four-year institutions and 65 percent at private four-year colleges...

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California traffic safety officials have followed the few rules that exist for overseeing sobriety checkpoints set up by hundreds of police departments, the state auditor reported yesterday.

No federal law or state statute governs what happens at the roadway operations, according to the auditor's report. And the California Office of Traffic Safety is not required to closely monitor what happens at checkpoints it funds, which now number more than 2,000 a year.

Chris Murphy, the traffic safety office’s director, said the audit validates that the state funds lawful, lifesaving checkpoints.

“It speaks volumes to the work that my staff and law enforcement is doing,” Murphy said. “The checkpoint program has been running very efficiently and effectively.”

Fatalities on California’s roadways dropped nearly 12 percent from 2009 to 2010, which Murphy partially attributes to checkpoints.

The traffic safety office spent $16.8 million for police overtime at more than 2,500 operations during the 2010 fiscal year. Auditors noted that those sobriety checkpoints resulted in almost 28,000 citations to unlicensed drivers, compared with roughly 7,000 drunken driving arrests...

Patricia Leigh Brown/California WatchAn ice cream vendor sells treats after school at in San Rafael's Canal area in Marin County.

Those wanting to check the socioeconomic pulse of the Canal area of San Rafael need only peruse the bulletin board at The Canal Alliance, a nonprofit center serving the neighborhood’s largely low-income Spanish-speaking population.

“Diabetes y Su Salud,” reads one flier about diabetes and health. “Cuartos de Renta,” says an advertisement for rooms for rent. Many Canal-area residents live in crowded apartments shared by multiple families, in which living rooms equipped with microwaves often are rented as a separate space.

In “A Portrait of Marin,” a report released last month by the Marin Community Foundation, which measures education, health and income disparities in the county’s 51 census tracts, the Canal area ranked lowest in community well-being. Wedged between Highway 101 and the bay, the neighborhood is a densely populated triangle of land that is predominantly Latino...

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As California continues to forge ahead implementing health reform, state Medi-Cal leaders and UC Davis researchers announced an agreement to examine public health system transformation efforts that may serve as models for the nation.

The researchers will evaluate public hospital systems as they revamp daily operations in ways meant to simultaneously reduce health costs and improve patient health.

New programs are taking shape under California’s Medi-Cal “waiver,” a $10 billion program that is part of the state’s effort to prepare for a major influx of beneficiaries who will be covered when the Affordable Care Act expands eligibility in 2014.

The waiver was adopted to set aside some federal Medicaid requirements so California can reshape systems, shifting from an emphasis on responding to health crises to preventing them altogether.

The Department of Health Care Services, which operates the Medi-Cal program, last week announced a $4.25 million agreement with the UC Davis Health System’s Institute for Population Health Improvement...

California High-Speed Rail Authority

California High-Speed Rail Authority leaders acknowledge they have “a lot of damage to undo” with Central Valley farmers and property owners along the route of the proposed train system.

As political battles loom in Sacramento over issuing $2.7 billion in bonds to begin building the system later this year in the Valley, authority chairman Dan Richard said a new business plan and new leadership are focused on “what it’s going to take to make those things right” and rebuild the agency’s credibility.

Richard was joined yesterday by authority Vice Chairman Tom Richards, a Fresno developer and board member Michael Rossi, a former vice president of Bank of America, in a meeting with Fresno County transportation officials and leaders from the county’s cities about the $98 billion train project.

“All three of us are dealing with a history here that has not been good,” Richard said yesterday.

Richard and Rossi were named to the authority’s board last summer by Gov. Jerry Brown; Richards was appointed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in late 2010.

A major obstacle will be acquiring the right of way for the tracks from businesses, homeowners and farmers along the route – a challenge made greater by what Richard called the authority’s “ham-handed” discussions with worried...

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A report commissioned by the Obama administration to re-examine the Department of Energy's loans to clean energy companies after the bankruptcies of the first two loan recipients, including Fremont-based Solyndra, found that close to $3 billion in loans could be at risk for default, which is in line with the department's own internal estimate.

The report [PDF], by businessman Herbert Allison and released Friday, says $2.7 billion is needed for so-called credit subsidy cost, the reserve amount that is budgeted to cover the risk of non-payment to the government. In its initial estimate, the Department of Energy's own loan program office had estimated that the cost of the credit subsidy for the loans would be about $2.9 billion.

The department's loan program, which has been a lightning rod for criticism by Republicans, got its start under the Bush administration. It was given more than $36 billion in 2009 as part of the stimulus program, which had a September 2011 deadline of getting the money to applicants. The demand for swift loan turnaround worried the Government Accountability Office, which had criticized the loan program in a July 2010 report – even before Solyndra's bankruptcy and the bankruptcy of New York-based...

Bus Stop to Nowhere–Southern Humboldt Chapter/FacebookProtesters from the Southern Humboldt Unified School District fight transportation cuts at the state Capitol in January.

California schools will no longer lose $248 million in transportation funding under legislation Gov. Jerry Brown signed Friday – a move applauded by many education officials and school districts that had decried the loss as a disproportionate burden on rural schools. 

But for some, the move is bittersweet at best: Hundreds of schools now stand to lose more money than they did before the law.

Instead of targeting school bus money, SB 81 allows school districts, county offices of education and charter schools to absorb the $248 million hit – a loss of about $42 per student – anywhere in their budgets. For districts that had little or no bus funding to begin with and for charter schools, which do not receive state transportation dollars, the shift means a bigger midyear budget cut...

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Southern Californians are among those at highest risk of death due to air pollution, according to recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency research published in the journal Risk Analysis.

The study, published last month, was conducted to “provide insight to the size and location of public health risks associated with recent levels of fine particles and ozone, allowing decision-makers to better target air quality policies,” the federal agency said in a statement responding to California Watch inquiries.

“While overall levels of fine particles and ozone have declined significantly in the past two decades, these two pollutants still pose a burden to public health,” the EPA statement said.

The study examined air pollution exposure based on 2005 air quality levels and projected there could be between 130,000 and 360,000 premature deaths among adults in coming years. The 2005 data was the best available for analyzing fine particulates and ozone, the EPA said. Among vulnerable populations like children, the EPA also estimates that fine particulate matter and ozone results in millions of cases of respiratory symptoms, asthma and school absences, as well as hundreds of thousands of cases of acute bronchitis and emergency room visits...