FITCHBURG — Interim Commissioner of Public Health Lauren Smith said Thursday that when she took over the department, following a deadly meningitis outbreak and the closure of a crime lab that shook confidence in the regulators, she engaged in a “frank and brutally honest introspection” with her staff.
One result of that introspection is a proposed $32 million budget increase at DPH, bringing the total amount to $549 million, which would allow for increased inspections and oversight of health care, hazardous material, and substance abuse facilities. That would fund 30 new positions and send $1 million to the Board of Registration in Pharmacy, Smith said.
“The public in general goes through its business, its daily life and appropriately assumes that the services, the restaurants, the beaches, the mammography machines, or everywhere it goes, that someone has looked at that, and someone has made sure that it’s OK,” said Smith. “Our role, as I see it, is to make sure that the public’s assumption that those things are well taken care of is actually true.”
The public’s confidence in pharmacies was shaken last year as hundreds fell ill around the country with ailments, including fungal meningitis, from tainted steroids produced at the New England Compounding Center in Framingham. That outbreak, which has sickened 714 and killed 48 by this week, led to changes within DPH, including unannounced inspections at the state’s 40 sterile compounding pharmacies. Many of those revealed that the alleged lack of proper protocols at the Framingham pharmacy was not unique.
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