Court Strikes Down Furloughs For Medical Board

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 25 Mar 2010 - 5:00 PDT


Furloughs for the staff of the Medical Board of California are officially over, effective today, after an Alameda County Superior Court ruled that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger lacks authority to furlough employees of special fund agencies.

The decision, handed down today by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch, means Medical Board staff will no longer be forced to take the first three Fridays of each month off.

The development represents a victory for the California Medical Association, which challenged the furloughs for the Medical Board staff in a separate case, arguing the Governor did not have the power to issue them or to take $6 million from the board funds to pay for other state programs.

"This is great news for California patients and their physicians," said Brennan Cassidy, M.D., president of CMA. "It means applications for physician licenses can be approved faster and doctors will be able to start seeing patients instead of waiting for months for paperwork to be processed."

CMA filed suit in October, after the Medical Board saw a backlog of physician applications reach more than 7,000. A San Francisco County Superior Court ruled in favor of the Governor on March 4, but CMA is appealing that decision.

The Governor has asked the California Supreme Court to consolidate all the appeals on furlough rulings and settle the matter once and for all. CMA filed an answer to the petition opposing consolidation. All briefs have been submitted and the matter now awaits a decision from the Supreme Court.

In its lawsuit, CMA alleged that the Governor's furlough order is illegal for the Medical Board's staff because the Medical Board is funded by physician fees, and it challenged the state moving $6 million of the Contingent Fund of the Medical Board into the state's General Fund for general state use.

Because the Governor has furloughed state employees three days per month, the Medical Board can no longer maintain adequate staffing, resulting in delays in processing license applications and conducting disciplinary investigations and enforcements, the suit said. Qualified physicians who are unlicensed but ready and able to immediately practice medicine must sit idle.

The suit contended that the furlough of the Medical Board cannot stand given these consequences that violate the Medical Practice Act, which requires the Medical Board to effectively and efficiently license physicians and conduct disciplinary investigations to protect the public.

With 5,100 work hours lost every month, the Medical Board saw an unprecedented backlog of license applications reach more than 7,000 in August 2009. The furloughs also cause excessive delays in disciplinary investigations and enforcements, putting the health of Californians at risk and subjecting physicians to unnecessarily long investigations.

In addition to taking away staff, the Governor and Legislature have redirected $6 million in Medical Board funds. By statute, the sole source of funds available to the Medical Board comes from physician license fees and other user fees that are mandated to be spent for Medical Board purposes. The Medical Board takes no money from the General Fund and does not depend on the state to support its mandate.

Source
California Medical Association

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