Healthcare Access Survey, Crisis Declaration could Advance Proposal for Redding-Based Medical School
The Shasta County board is hoping to increase the number of medical providers across the region. A medical school is one potential solution.
Shasta County healthcare consultant Chriss Street last worked in a healthcare-related field a quarter-century ago. Nevertheless, a majority of county supervisors believe Street has discovered the key to solving a long-standing and widespread problem: increasing healthcare access in rural regions like Shasta.
A new medical school could be the winning solution, according to Street, who has been quietly advancing the project proposal since January, even before being hired to consult on healthcare. Street has offered no real data to back the suggestion, focusing instead on compiling data documenting the need for a solution.
Without addressing whether he assessed any other approaches to solving the provider shortage problem, during a presentation to the board in late May Street jumped straight to the idea of a medical school. He also introduced privately owned Simpson University as a potential partner in the project, sharing a video pitch from university President Norm Hall.
Street, whose professional history includes a $7 million legal penalty for financial mismanagement, was hired earlier this year for the six-month healthcare consulting position at a maximum pay of $40,000. His contract recently came under fire after an investigation by Shasta Scout revealed that Street had submitted his winning proposal to become healthcare consultant before the board considered hiring one. A taxpayer has since filed a lawsuit alleging the healthcare consultant contract was given to Street unfairly.
In May, Street, who’s also the chief financial officer for the secessionist movement New California State, told the board he sees a medical school as an economic driver for the county, and believes other rural communities across America would follow Shasta’s lead.
The project is estimated to require an initial investment between $40 million to $60 million. Street said he’s looking into federal funding sources via the United States Department of Agriculture, including a development grant.
Supervisors Kevin Crye, Chris Kelstrom and Corkey Harmon all expressed immediate support for Street’s medical school idea despite a dearth of financial details and no assurances that there will be sufficient students, faculty or clinical rotations to support such a plan.
Even best case, the project would not result in any new healthcare providers for at least a dozen years. Street has offered no interim solutions to solving the county’s immediate healthcare shortage which is likely to worsen soon, as a significant number of local physicians have already reached retirement age.
HHSA releases survey on healthcare provider shortage
About a week after Street’s presentation, Shasta County’s Health and Human Services Agency (HSSA) released a survey asking community members to share their experiences looking for local primary health care providers. It closed today, June 20. As of a week ago, 160 community members had responded.
HHSA distributed the survey publicly without an explanation of who designed it, why it was being released or how the results would be used. In response to questions from Shasta Scout, HHSA said the county would use survey data to “pursue state and federal funding opportunities” saying information shared by the public would be provided to state and county officials as well as local partners.
Street told Shasta Scout he was not involved with developing or releasing the survey but “thinks it’s a great idea.” He said the data he’s gathered about healthcare providers has help move the county towards a solution by clarifying the need for more local physicians.
Public health official releases declaration of local health crisis
Not long after HHSA’s survey was released, Shasta County Public Health Officer Dr. James Mu released a declaration saying the lack of local physicians has resulted in a public health crisis. He told Shasta Scout he didn’t coordinate with Street on declaring the crisis but his decision to do so was impacted by the recent discussions and developments around healthcare initiatives.
“We are now at a critical juncture,” Mu wrote via email. “A significant portion of our physician workforce is nearing retirement, recruitment remains difficult, and our county continues to experience poor health outcomes. The recent surge in public interest — sparked in part by local discussions, including Mr. Street’s involvement — makes this a timely and valuable moment to act. This declaration is intended to focus that momentum, bring stakeholders together and finally move toward long-term, sustainable solutions.”
A health crisis is not the same as a health emergency, and Mu’s declaration, which was affirmed by a board vote last week, essentially amounts to a call to action. The physician outlined steps he believes could help address the provider shortage, including more efforts to recruit and retain physicians, expanded training opportunities, more clinical infrastructure, and seeking out state and federal funding.
During a discussion of the declaration last week, Supervisor Plummer asked Mu to clarify how the county will know when the health crisis is over. Mu offered some ideas on what he considered reasonable wait times to see a primary or specialist, but no definitive metric is included in the declaration.
The ongoing battle for rural healthcare access
Efforts to improve rural healthcare access across the state, including in Shasta, are not new.
Reporting by Shasta Scout in 2022 documented long-term efforts by a variety of North State collaborators to mitigate the provider shortage issue which, they agreed, is caused by complex, interconnecting issues that are often rooted in financial factors like patient loads and economies of scale.
Importantly, rural healthcare provider deficits include not only a lack of doctors but also an ongoing shortage of other kinds of medical workers like nurses, phlebotomists and medical assistants. Shasta Health Assessment and Redesign Collaborative (SHARC) is one of the local groups working to identify solutions to the problem of medical worker recruitment.
The Health Alliance of Northern California (HANC), which works to support delivery or primary care in rural and frontier areas, is also involved. Doreen Bradshaw, HANC’s former director, told Shasta Scout in 2022 that “rural counties are usually older, sicker, poorer.” About one-third of Shasta County is on Medi-Cal, she explained, and low reimbursement rates contribute to the problem as physicians tend to group around urban teaching hospitals where they’ll find the private-pay patient load needed to pay off often-huge medical school loans.
Before Street was hired as the county’s healthcare consultant, Bradshaw was among other community members invited to apply. In an emailed response to County CEO David Rickert declining that offer earlier in January, Bradshaw urged him to work closely with SHARC to assess the best response to Shasta County’s healthcare provider shortage.
“This group has been doing county wide health planning and redesign since 2006” Bradshaw said. “A lot is being done to address these challenges. If this was an easy fix we would have done it by now.”
Here’s what’s next
During the board’s late May meeting, supervisors voted to ask Street to continue to work on the medical school proposal and bring back more information in the coming months. Supervisor Plummer suggested Street should be tasked to specifically address some of the many unknown factors in the proposal, but Supervisors Crye, Kelstrom and Harmon all said they preferred to let the consultant continue to manage his own process without board interference on what information he needs to produce.
For his part, Street told the board he’s prepared to provide a “shovel-ready” solution to Shasta’s healthcare provider shortage in July.
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I’m curious what the sales pitch will be when we’re trying to recruit faculty and students for this new medical school. Will we highlight the firing of our Public Health Officer during a global pandemic? Our mega-church faith healers? Our horrendous social determinants of health statistics?
“Grow your own” is great, in theory, but we also need retain the physicians we train. In a community with leadership that is openly hostile toward policies and funding to keep people healthy, it’s going to be a hard sell.
Bring back negations with Kaiser HMO. There was interest a few years ago. Shasta Board of Supervisors needs to look at this again. This will solve the lack of health care providers in Shasta County. Why? Because Kaiser comes with lots of doctors.
Kaiser comes with Heath care and insurance under one roof. A good HMO.
People who move up from the Sacramento or the Bay Area lose their Kaiser because there out of the zip code area.
Medicare Par C with Kaiser is cost effective with seniors and care is excellent. You know what your cost is. No need to contract out for specialty doctors.
I like my Kaiser Provider and I want to keep my Kaiser Provider.
Happy Citizen: It’s an interesting idea – I wonder what’s already been considered as far as Kaiser. I’ll have to check.
Thanks Annelise,
For checking this out. i’m not sure but a fellow citizen said Kaiser was looking to take over Shasta regional. But Shasta County got plenty of land to build a new Kaiser hospital or clinic.
Just remember that the Primay in June 2026 is our opportunity to make Shasta County Sane and Sensible Again. Register to vote, vote with full knowledge of who you cast your vote for and take a friend to the polls.
They can release these things all they want, but the more current upcoming cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, so far the count will be over 700 rural hospital will completely shut down, and we are rural enough to where it will affect Shasta county a lot, but that’s not being addressed.
You can’t also look past thinking building a school, that will start out being 100% unaccredited, will somehow get people to come here to get underpaid like everyone else that works for the county and healthcare will just turn everything around? Bad decisions have come close to dooming us to staying poor and not a place where people will come to work
Why isn’t Mike Michalck on the BOS? Physician shortages have been brewing for at least the past three decades. This is nothing new. I agree that the actions of the present civic leader leadership has exacerbated the problem. I would love for the county to support trusted members of the medical community who are already working on this problem. I’m happy that the board of supervisors and the health officer have recognized it’s importance. But they are not going to just barnstorm the solution. It is complex and difficult, and since every community has the same issue, they are all in competition.
BTW…that’s a wonderful and retired Dr. David Short; who knows what he’s talking about.
Here’s a simple litmus test folks. Anything that Crye has his dirty mits in, especially with integrity challenged –street is a hard no starter. Oppose it as the scheme con game it appears. Shovel ready my eye.
The fact that Dhanuka is tight with the Crye- Jones gang frankly makes me very nervous. I have respect for him as a medical professional and voted for him for RCC.
But the whole thing smells fishy. And to seal the deal he shut out supervisor Matt Plummer (while he was absent for an honourable reson) in every way Matt is his intellectual Superior and a sound, rational, analytical intelligent mind. That scares the hell out of Crye and gnaws at him. Note every week he gets more bloody minded and brusque. Seething with rage is our imposed self appointed emperor, Caesar Augustus Narcissus.
Enjoy your last year, Narcissus. You’re done. You’ve failed– bigly. And it’s ALL your fault.
And MAGA is all about law and order….not. The next thing we know, King Crye, a leader of the MAGA Cartel of Shasta County government, along with CEO Rickerd, Corky, and Kilstorm, will give Street $40,000 to do a feasibility study on opening a law school to fill all the positions in the D.A. office. After all, Crye wonders why prosecutors won’t work for peanuts like the sheriffs do. Of course, grifter Crye, who makes most of his money feeding at the public trough using government funds or resources to enrich himself, also doubled his own salary. This is MAGA corruption, folks. Shame on them, yes. Shame on us, too, for voting these ignorant, incompetent grifters into office. That is if you did…
This is a waste of money! We need science and sanity here.
$40,000 might help one physician put a little dent in their student debt.
Oh so foolish in oh-so-many respects.
“For his part, Street told the board he’s prepared to provide a “shovel-ready” solution to Shasta’s healthcare provider shortage in July.”
This gives me the same confidence that the Orange Menace does when he says he’ll have something great in 2 weeks.
Thank you for this medical update. This crisis results from many factors, but the recent health crisis began when Patrick Jones, an extreme far-right conspiracy theorist, waged his secessionist civil war against the State of California and declared war on science itself. He orchestrated the removal of Dr. Karen Ramstrom because Ramstrom genuinely believed in science and recognized the empirical medical processes from the National Health Information Center, American Medical Association, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Surgeon General, which is the largest and the Gold Standard for medical practice. In short, Ramstrom would not pledge allegiance to MAGA conspiracies. Perhaps more importantly, Ramstrom believes in following the law and was fired because she did so. By the way, Tim Garmon has openly expressed his deep regret for voting with Jones.
The conspiracy-based COVID-19 vaccine issue marked Kevin Crye’s entry into politics. From medical science to elections to chemtrails, Crye has continued to carry the torch for Jones even further. Crye’s appointments include a conspiracist who believes mosquitoes are “flying Covid Vaccine syringes,” and his selection of the aforementioned Street, a leader of a far-right secessionist movement that argues California is an illegal entity, along with Dr. Wu, a Covid Vax Denier who was funded by taxpayers to return to school so he could qualify for Dr. Karen Ramstrom’s position, is nothing short of a medical miscarriage made in MAGA. The delusional medical school idea is a scam for someone, perhaps Street, to soak taxpayers. It’s as weird as Wu, Street, Crye, and Jones, and their conspiracy vision for Shasta County, and as wacky as Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is for America; simply nuts.
,,,and what’s the update on Dr. Mu’s schooling ? Has he completed it, and what was the price tag ? Has he completly dropped all of his patients, or is he still getting paid for two jobs at the same time ?
More money down a rat hole, just to put money in Street’s pockets. Why?
how will they get this school accrediated? It is not an easy process. Keep up your great work
Yes the accreditation process is quite a hurdle.
…and especially if it is attached to Simpson Univerity, a private and very religious school with stark rules that many students would not be willing to sign on to.
This is all a pipe dream.
Wake up. Redding and Shasta County aren’t ever going to get any additional higher education funding or expanded facilility assistance or support from the State of California as long as owe have a BOS, congressman, and state legislator who are not aligned with the Democrats in Sacramento.
This is politics. There isn’t enough money here to even pave the roads properly in this county – let alone consider a medical school!
At the same time, we have a president who is waving at California with only part of his hand, considers the state and our governor “enemies”, and is on record this week as willing to withhold funding for California’s firefighting and other basic federal services.
Realistically, the rest of the largest state in the nation is of the opinion that Shasta County is run by a majority of conspiracy theorists and fruitcakes. How can you attract investment, physicians, or qualified police applicants to that environment.
Let’s stop wasting time and money on lawsuits, start attending to our own basic needs (schools, roads, business development, infrastructure), get rid of the morons who are making us the laughing stock of the rest of the country, focus on improving our own community, and maybe we’ll again attract quality personnel to our county offices and physicians who will be interested in bringing their families and building their practices here.
You have nailed it. Until the voters here come to their senses we will have an amateur BOS unable to deal with the real issues you mentioned. The next election is critical, but truthfully I’m not hopeful sorry to say.
“Supervisor Plummer suggested Street should be tasked to specifically address some of the many unknown factors in the proposal, but Supervisors Crye, Kelstrom and Harmon all said they preferred to let the consultant continue to manage his own process. . .”
In other words, they don’t want to know what they don’t know but prefer that the salesman tell them what they need to know.