Local Physician Leader Elected President of State Post

COLTON>> Dr. Dev GnanaDev, a longtime surgeon and nationally recognized leader in health care, has been elected as president of the Medical Board of California. GnanaDev, associate medical director and chairman of the Department of Surgery at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, was initially appointed by Gov. Jerry Brown to the Medical Board in 2011. In July 2014, he was elected to the post of Medical Board vice president. The Medical Board is a state government agency that licenses and disciplines medical doctors and provides two principal services to consumers: public-record information about California-licensed physicians and investigation of complaints against physicians. The board has 15 members – eight physicians and five public members appointed by the governor; the Speaker of the Assembly and Senate Rules Committee each appoint one public member. The Medical Board licenses more than 130,000 physicians and surgeons statewide. One area GnanaDev said he will focus on as president is the opioid abuse epidemic. “My goal is to decrease the number of opioid overdose deaths by aggressively going after doctors with pill mills while at the same time educating physicians and other providers in opioid prescription guidelines, including use of CURES database,” said GnanaDev, who served as medical director at ARMC from 2000 to 2012 and has held many other leadership positions during more than 30 years as a surgeon. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioid overdose deaths in the United States hit record levels in 2014, with a 14 percent increase in one year. A resident of Redlands, GnanaDev is the founding president and CEO of California University of Science and Medicine, a new non-profit allopathic medical school based in Colton. The medical school expects to seat its first class in 2017 or 2018.