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| Inmate deaths in N.Y. raise questions in Fla. |
| By Palm Beach Post |
| Published: 07/26/2004 |
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New York state investigators have accused Prison Health Services, the company seeking to renew its contact at the Palm Beach County Jail, of causing the death of a Schenectady, N.Y., inmate suffering from Parkinson's disease. A scathing report issued last month by the New York Commission on Correction echoed criticism in Palm Beach County that Prison Health Services has withheld care to inmates for added profit. The company is one of five bidding on the county contract. The New York report details what led to inmate Brian Tetrault's brain basically shutting down after he was denied his prescribed medication for advanced Parkinson's disease by a Prison Health Services medical director at the Schenectady County Jail. The commission described Prison Health Services, the nation's largest private provider of correctional medicine, as a "business corporation engaged in unlawful corporate medical practice." Prison Health Services is approaching the end of a 20-month, $15.6 million contract in Palm Beach County, one of its more lucrative clients. A selection committee could recommend this week who will get the new, two-year contract. In Schenectady, as in Palm Beach County, Prison Health Services became the jail's medical provider when it bought competitor EMSA Correctional Care in 1999. Brian Tetrault ended up in Prison Health Services' care after he was arrested in November 2001 on a burglary charge for trying to retrieve fishing equipment from the garage of his estranged wife's house. He had end-stage Parkinson's, a progressive nerve disease characterized by muscle tremors, weakness and paralysis. The Prison Health Services health administrator at the jail decided Tetrault was malingering and "forced-marched" him to the medical clinic that Nov. 15, according to the report. By the time he was hospitalized, Tetrault's brain was so swollen that doctors described it as herniated. He fell into a coma and died of a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lung, the report said. The New York deaths evoke similar issues in Palm Beach County. Both inmates were denied medication. Prison Health Services staff concluded Tetrault was faking illness and labeled Smith a drug abuser. Company officials and doctors have cited malingering inmates and drug abuse as reasons for denying medication. In Palm Beach County, Prison Health Services came under criticism after the widow of HIV-infected jail inmate Patrick Bilello gave notice that she would file a wrongful-death suit over her husband's medical care. Bilello's death sparked a pending grand jury investigation into company practices. Complaints surfaced from other inmates, their families, and Prison Health Services' own nurses about lack of medical, psychiatric and prenatal care. Judges released two inmates -- one whose leg had to be amputated -- because of medical concerns. This month, the county health department threatened to take legal action if Prison Health Services and the sheriff's office did not follow recommendations for containing an infectious staph outbreak bedeviling the jail since last summer. |
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