Board reports staffing increases, launches complainant liaison unit and complaint‑tracking work; advocates urge redesign input

Board staff reported improvements to enforcement and technology operations at the Medical Board of California’s quarterly meeting, including a newly stood‑up complainant liaison unit (CLU), progress on a complaint‑tracking tool, and expanded investigator hiring at the Health Quality Investigation Unit (HQIU).

Charlene Smith, the board’s new enforcement chief, said the central complaint unit had received 4,449 complaints so far in the fiscal year and reported an average processing time in her unit of 158 days. Smith said the complainant liaison unit — created in response to the board’s sunset review and subsequent legislation — has six analysts on staff, a manager starting later in the month, and had referred about 116 cases into the CLU for deeper engagement; CLU staff had conducted roughly 19 interviews with complainants during initial operations. Smith said her office continues to recruit expert reviewers and manage probation caseloads; as of the reported date, about 573 licensees were on probation.

Information Systems and Board (ISB) staff briefed the board on IT projects: the Breeze complaint‑form redesign code is being incorporated into Breeze; an iOS app remains in final testing; the Volunteer Physician Registry interface was modernized and grew to approximately 900 active volunteers after recent changes; the Direct Online Certification Submission (DOCS) system was updated to allow postgraduate training programs to upload documents for licensees; and a project to convert license renewal notices to electronic distribution was underway. Staff said the complaint‑tracking system will translate internal Breeze activity codes into user‑friendly descriptions and provide complainants with automated status updates; staff committed to showing demos to the board and stakeholders during development.

HQIU leadership — Chief Kathleen Nichols and Deputy Chief Stephanie Whitley — reported substantial hiring progress and said several previously understaffed field offices had been filled. HQIU’s vacancy rate had been about 16 percent but investigators and supervisors had been added; leadership said closing aged cases will take time as newly hired investigators complete training and field training requirements. HQIU also reported upward progress in decreasing the average days to complete investigations; board materials showed the multi‑year trend moving downward (average for closed cases falling below 500 days in the chart shared with members).

Multiple public commenters representing Consumer Watchdog and other patient‑safety advocates urged the board to involve advocates directly in the Breeze complaint form redesign and the complaint‑tracking system. Advocates asked for additional CLU reporting: counts of complainants who were interviewed, who declined interview requests, and who did not respond; they described experiences in which CLU representatives gave inconsistent guidance and recommended more training for CLU staff. Technical and transparency questions from board members included whether the Breeze‑based tracking tool could include a user survey and whether the Department of Consumer Affairs has the technical capacity to provide bounce‑rate/open‑rate metrics for email notifications; staff said the DCA platform does not provide the full marketing analytics of commercial systems but that the Breeze confirmation workflow now provides better indicators when licensees confirm change of email addresses.

Board members asked staff to include stakeholders and the AG’s office during development and to present demos to the board in future meetings. Staff said a demo with screenshots would likely be available by the August meeting and more fully by the next fiscal year.