The California State Auditor condemned three government agencies in a recent report for failing to fix problems with health care programs that serve some of the state’s most vulnerable residents.
The Department of Health Care Services has been slow to improve oversight of how counties manage and spend money for mental health care, the auditor said.
A state auditor’s report released this week found that California is unprepared to protect its most vulnerable residents during natural disasters, including those who have disabilities or are medically fragile. That’s despite the fact that a quarter of the state’s population lives in an area at risk of wildfire, and 20 percent of Californians are either over the age of 65 or have a disability.
Given that Medi-Cal covers around 5.5 million children—more than half of kids in the state—the number of children not accessing all the preventive services they’re entitled to accounts for close to a quarter of California’s children.