health

It was easy to feel sorry for state Secretary of Health & Mental Hygiene Joshua Sharfstein during the last couple of years. When it was announced he was leaving the department late last month, the only surprise was that his departure wasn’t immediate and that it hadn’t happened sooner. With the failure of the Maryland Health Care Exchange, his department already had too much dysfunction on its plate.

When Health Secretary Joshua Sharfstein leaves his state post at year’s end, his many achievements will be eclipsed by one giant failure: Maryland’s terribly botched health insurance exchange rollout.

There are over 1,300 licensed assisted living facilities in Maryland caring for thousands of residents not quite able to care for themselves. But year after year over the past decade the state health department has failed to do annual inspections for a majority of them