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Senate committee advances Mark Beckley for Department of State Hospitals post; nominee outlines hiring push and new electronic health record
Summary
The Rules Committee voted to move Mark Beckley's nomination for chief deputy director (operations), Department of State Hospitals, to the full Senate after he described rapid hiring events, college partnerships and a June 1 contract with NetSmart for electronic health records.
The Senate Rules Committee on June 9 advanced Mark Beckley’s nomination to be chief deputy director for operations at the Department of State Hospitals, voting to send his nomination to the full Senate for confirmation.
Beckley outlined a multifaceted effort to reduce chronic staff vacancies and improve patient care. To recruit and convert applicants, he described “rapid hiring events” that combine outreach, application assistance, mock interviews and on-site interviews. He said those events have produced large applicant pools — for example, hospital police officer applications rose from the low hundreds to more than 4,000 in a recent year — and that a recent rapid-hire effort for psychiatric technicians at Patton State Hospital filled 65 positions.
On technology and treatment, Beckley told the committee the department signed a contract on June 1 with NetSmart to implement a new electronic health record (EHR) system. He said the EHR will reduce paperwork, enable real-time access to patient records, improve record sharing across facilities and allow the department to mine data to identify best practices.
Senators pressed Beckley on long-standing infrastructure and safety issues at state hospitals. He acknowledged aging facilities — citing Napa’s 150-year history and hospitals with fixtures more than 70 years old — and listed infrastructure priorities including HVAC, fire-alarm replacement and anti-ligature modifications. He described oversight and reporting relationships with the Office of Law Enforcement Services (OLES), noting that unexpected deaths and incidents are investigated by an Office of Special Investigations and reported to OLES, which tracks data such as assaults, use-of-force incidents and unexpected deaths.
Beckley said permanent state civil-service staffing remains the department’s goal and estimated contract staff make up about 3% of positions, while acknowledging that remote hospitals (e.g., Atascadero, Coalinga/Kern-area facilities) remain harder to staff. He said partnerships with universities and community colleges produce steady applicant pipelines and that conversion rates from training programs have been as high as 50% at some sites.
Following the exchange, the committee approved a motion to advance Beckley’s nomination to the full Senate for confirmation.
