California Department Of Health Services

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration flouted a six-year-old state law by failing to enact a program intended to provide medical care to impoverished Californians with HIV, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled in a decision made public Thursday. Writing that the state "has not fulfilled its statutory obligation," Judge James C.

California health regulators have cited White Memorial Medical Center for failing to properly sterilize a medical instrument later implicated in a deadly bacterial outbreak in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit. White Memorial, near downtown Los Angeles, closed its busy neonatal intensive care unit last month after identifying an outbreak of \o7Pseudomonas aeruginosa\f7, which sickened five babies. Two of the babies are believed to have died as a result.

The state Department of Health Services inadvertently revealed the names and addresses of up to 53 Californians enrolled in an AIDS drug assistance program to other enrollees by putting benefit notification letters in the wrong envelopes, officials said Friday. The letters went out Tuesday to recipients in 16 counties, including Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Diego.

California health regulators outlined their case Friday against Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, saying repeated lapses in care have harmed patients and warrant the revocation of its license. The allegations by the California Department of Health Services, detailed in a 32-page document, cite findings from nine inspections between October 2004 and June 2007. In particular, the report said, the hospital has failed to ensure the competency of its nurses and the protection of its patients.

People who use only cellphones -- who researchers say are more likely to be younger, binge drinkers, smokers and without health insurance -- are about to have a say in shaping California healthcare policy. All they need to do is answer the phone when the state comes calling. Beginning in September, about 4,000 cellphone-only users will start receiving calls from the California Health Interview Survey.

State health officials fined nine California hospitals Thursday for infractions that put patients at imminent risk of injury or death, including a notorious case at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in May in which a woman died after writhing unattended on the floor of the emergency room lobby. Glendale Memorial Hospital and Health Center, Garden Grove Hospital and Medical Center, and Kaiser Foundation Hospital Santa Clara were among the hospitals fined.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously called for an audit of how the health department has spent federal grants intended to prepare for bioterrorism, after two supervisors worried aloud that possible misspending could give the county a black eye. The board's action came a day after The Times reported that the county Department of Health Services spent at least $2 million in federal grant funds for items that were of questionable relevance to terrorism preparedness.

Mary Jobe fell down the stairs of her San Francisco home a month ago, fracturing her pelvis. Only time and therapy would heal the bone, and social workers recommended a nursing home where the 84-year-old could recuperate. With Jobe's release from the hospital imminent, her relatives had little more than a day to check out the facility or come up with an alternative. As Jobe's daughter drove out to see it, her niece logged on to the Internet.

State corrections officials on Friday blamed bacteria in milk for an outbreak of gastroenteritis that struck 1,300 inmates at 11 state prisons last month. Acting Corrections Secretary James Tilton said investigators from the state Department of Health Services had linked the illness to a batch of milk produced by a dairy at one of the prisons, Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy.

State health regulators have found that systemic problems in the kidney transplant program at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana resulted in its "inability to ensure the provision of quality healthcare in a safe environment." Western's kidney program, one of the smallest in the state, performed just 13 transplants last year -- two short of the number required to remain proficient, the state Department of Health Services found.