SACRAMENTO -- An audit released Wednesday found widespread mismanagement and overspending in the state prison health care system, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.

State procedures for contracting health services are so poor as to practically invite abuse, said Controller Steve Westly, who was joined at a news conference by Robert Sillen, the court-appointed receiver of the prison medical care system. Westly highlighted some examples:

-- One urologist charged the state $2,036 an hour.

-- An orthopedic surgeon, in a single day's invoice, billed for 30 hours' worth of work. The surgeon billed the state nearly $1.5 million in one year.

-- One doctor who was paid more than $500,000 over a 10-month period provided inaccurate test results for Hepatitis C. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation proceeded to pay the same contractor for retesting, and then renewed the doctor's contract for three years.

More broadly, the audit found "no clear policies" for overseeing billing and contracting for medical services. And because of deficiencies in contracting procedures, the state has paid millions more than other entities for the same services, the audit stated.

"What we've seen here," Westly said, "is a pattern of consistent mismanagement and a lack of internal financial controls."

A series of articles by the Mercury News last year documented a number of problems in the prison health care system. In one instance, the Mercury News found, the state was shelling out tens of thousands of dollars to a doctor who was no longer seeing patients because he had been placed on administrative leave after being linked to the deaths of three inmates.

Terry Thornton, a spokeswomen for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, did not dispute the audit's findings but said the problem cuts across many state agencies. The rules for contracting medical services and hiring physicians, for example, involve other departments.

"We agree there have been deficiencies," Thornton said. "That's why we welcome the involvement of the receiver so we can fix all of this."

Sillen said the audit is one in a long list of problems with the prison health system, which he is working to reform. He is to meet with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders today about possible reforms. The Legislature convenes Monday for a special session on prisons.

"The important thing," Sillen said, "is there are still needless deaths of people in the prisons because of the state's own unwillingness or inability to address these issues over the years."