2014-041 - Status of Recommendations - Table 1

1. To provide effective oversight of its systemwide compensation policies, the university should create a centralized information system structure to catalog university compensation by individual, payment type, and funding source. The university should then use this information to monitor campuses' implementation of systemwide policies and measure the impact of these policies on university finances.

3. To ensure that campuses employ consistent search processes and develop appropriate policies, the university should issue systemwide guidance on the hiring process for management personnel. In developing this guidance, the university should instruct campuses to compare the proportions of women and minorities in the total applicant pool with the proportions in the labor pool to help assess the success of their outreach efforts in recruiting female and minority applicants. To help ensure that they have sufficient data from applicants to effectively compare these proportions, campuses could send reminders to applicants requesting them to submit information regarding their gender and ethnicity.

4. To ensure that campuses employ consistent search processes and develop appropriate policies, the university should issue systemwide guidance on the hiring process for management personnel. In developing this guidance, the university should advise campuses to compare and report the gender and ethnicity of their current workforce to the labor pool by separating management personnel positions into groups based on the function of their positions to ensure that placement goals are meaningful and useful to those involved in the hiring process. Direct campuses to have search committees review affirmative action plans so they are aware of the availability and placement goals for women and minorities when planning the search process. The guidance should address the purpose of placement goals and the affirmative action plan in general so that the search committees have the appropriate context and do not misuse the information.

5. To ensure that campuses employ hiring practices that are consistent with laws and regulations, the university should issue systemwide guidance on the hiring process for professors. In developing this guidance, the university should devise and implement a uniform method for campuses to use when calculating availability of data to better enable the university to identify and compare availability and placement goals systemwide and among campuses. Additionally, direct campuses to compare and report the gender and ethnicity of their current workforce to the labor pool by individual department to ensure that placement goals are meaningful and useful to those involved in the hiring process.

6. To broaden the perspective of the committees and increase the reach of the search for presidential positions, the university should develop policies regarding the diversity of the trustees committee and the advisory committee and consider alternatives on the manner in which to increase committee diversity.

1. To ensure that the branch uses sufficiently reliable data from its future data system to manage its inspection workload, the department should develop and maintain adequate documentation related to data storage, retrieval, and maintenance.

2. To ensure that the branch can sufficiently demonstrate that the fees it assesses are reasonable, the department should evaluate the branch's current fee structure using analyses that consider fiscal and workload factors. These analyses should establish a reasonable link between fees charged and the branch's actual costs for regulating those that pay specific fees. Further, the analyses should demonstrate how the branch calculated specific fees.

3. To make certain that it can identify and address existing work backlogs and comply with all of its federal and state obligations, the department should develop a staffing plan for the branch based on current, reliable data. The plan should involve a reevaluation of the branch's assumptions about workload factors, such as how many inspections an inspector can perform annually. The plan should also include the following components:
• An assessment of all backlogged work and the human resources necessary to eliminate that backlog within a reasonable amount of time.
• An assessment of all currently required work and the human resources necessary to accomplish it.

4. To inform the Legislature when it is likely to receive the information to evaluate the State's need for its own disposal facility, the department should establish and communicate a timeline describing when the report required by Section 115000.1 of the Health and Safety Code will be available. The department should also see that its executive management and the branch discuss with appropriate members of the Legislature as soon as possible the specific information required by state law that it cannot provide. Further, to the extent that the department cannot provide the information required by law, it should seek legislation to amend the law.

5. To provide greater public transparency and accountability of its decommissioning practices, the department should begin complying with the Executive Order D-62-02 and develop dose-based decommissioning standards formally. If the department believes that doing so is not feasible, it should ask the governor to rescind this 2002 executive order.

6. When the Radiological Health Branch has an understanding of the disposal needs for generators in California, it should develop an updated low-level waste disposal plan.

1. Laboratory Services should perform all its mandated oversight responsibilities for laboratories subject to its jurisdiction operating within and outside California, including, but not limited to the following:
• Inspecting licensed laboratories every two years.
• Sanctioning laboratories as appropriate.
• Reviewing and investigating complaints and ensuring necessary resolution.

2. Laboratory Services should adopt and implement proficiency-testing policies and procedures for staff to do the following:
• Promptly review laboratories' proficiency-testing results and notify laboratories that fail.
• Follow specified timelines for responding to laboratories' attempts to correct proficiency-testing failures and for sanctioning laboratories that do not comply.
• Monitor the proficiency-testing results of out-of-state laboratories.
• Verify laboratories' enrollment in proficiency testing, and ensure that Laboratory Services receives proficiency-testing scores from all enrolled laboratories.

3. To update its regulations, Laboratory Services should review its clinical laboratory regulations and repeal or revise them as necessary. As part of its efforts to revise regulations, Laboratory Services should ensure that the regulations include requirements such as time frames it wants to impose on the laboratory community.

4. Laboratory Services should continue its efforts to license California laboratories that require licensure. Further, it should take steps to license out-of-state laboratories that perform testing on specimens originating in California but are not licensed, as the law requires.

5. To strengthen its complaints process, Laboratory Services should identify necessary controls and incorporate them into its complaints policies. The necessary controls include, but are not limited to, receiving, logging, tracking, and prioritizing complaints, as well as ensuring that substantiated allegations are corrected. In addition, Laboratory Services should develop and implement corresponding procedures for each control. Further, Laboratory Services should establish procedures to ensure that it promptly forwards complaints for which it lacks jurisdiction to the entity having jurisdiction.

6. To strengthen its sanctioning efforts, Laboratory Services should do the following:
• Maximize its opportunities to impose sanctions.
• Appropriately justify and document the amounts of the civil money penalties it imposes.
• Ensure that it always collects the penalties it imposes.
• Follow up to ensure that laboratories take corrective action.
• Ensure that when it sanctions a laboratory it notifies other appropriate agencies as necessary.

7. Public Health, in conjunction with Laboratory Services, should ensure that Laboratory Services has sufficient resources to meet all its oversight responsibilities.

8. Laboratory Services should work with its Information Technology Services Division and other appropriate parties to ensure that its data systems support its needs. If Laboratory Services continues to use its internally developed databases, it should ensure that it develops and implements appropriate system controls.

9. To demonstrate that it has used existing resources strategically and has maximized their utility to the extent possible, Laboratory Services should identify and explore opportunities to leverage existing processes and procedures. These opportunities should include, but not be limited to, exercising clinical laboratory oversight when it renews licenses and registrations, developing a process to share state concerns identified during federal inspections, and using accreditation organizations and contracts to divide its responsibilities for inspections every two years.

1. To meet the requirements of federal ADA regulations, the Veterans Home should develop and update as needed a plan that identifies areas of noncompliance and includes the appropriate steps and milestones for achieving full compliance.