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| Healthcare Budget: Aging Inmate Population |
| By Albert Woodard , Chairman, CEO and President of Business Computer Applications (BCA) |
| Published: 07/01/2013 |
Prisoners incarcerated throughout the U.S. are getting older and as they age, the cost of caring for them dramatically increases causing dramatic upward spikes in costs to local, state and federal budgets and therefore the taxpayer.
More than 2.2 million people are incarcerated in state and federal prisons throughout the United States and each one of them, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, has a constitutional right to health care, causing prison officials to scramble to find solutions to control costs that are effective and humane. According to the American Journal of Nursing, 20 years ago only about 25 percent of the federal prison population was older than 50 but that number reached 33 percent in 2010 and new data indicates it is going even higher. Faced with these realities states are struggling to provide economical and quality health care services that are currently chewing up almost 20 percent of their correctional budgets and rising. Health care expenditures will continue to increase rapidly as prison populations swell due to aging as well as tougher sentencing laws, longer prison sentences, increases in chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease, infectious diseases such as AIDS and hepatitis and mentally ill and homeless patients being housed in prisons and jails. It’s odd that the U.S. health care industry, which boasts some of the most advanced medical procedures, drugs and techniques in the world, is still in the dark ages when it comes to using the latest technological advances. But in my more than 30 years of providing the health care sector with solutions, I’m seeing a faster and faster move toward an information backbone that enables institutions like prisons to provide both cost effective and advanced care to ailing inmates. In many correctional institutions around the country electronic medical record systems have started to replace paper medical files and their benefits continue to grow as the technology advances. Practitioners no longer have to have a physical file in front of them to evaluate a patient. Just like e-mail, Facebook, and ATM’s and so on, where our information follows us around the globe, the medical sector is realizing that those same mobile and cloud-based technologies can help provide superior care at lower costs and the prison system has been quick to pick up on it. Electronic records enable the physician to quickly review pertinent information from anywhere. The merging of all this information into one data base enables faster response times for treatment, more accurate documentation, reduced medication errors and lowers costs. Correctional health care costs reached almost $10 billion four years ago according to governing.com citing Prison Health Services, a private company that provides inmate health care and those costs are continuing to increase. Things are so dire in California that in early 2011 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered that state to release tens of thousands of prison inmates (Plata v Brown), a decision that was driven, the court majority said, by “overcrowding, which has caused suffering and death.” A federal overseer said earlier that California’s prison system should consider freeing the sickest inmates to cut costs. The consequences of that decision have states scrambling to find solutions to keep costs reasonable and still provide quality care in their correctional institutions. Texas as is on example of how a system can benefit from the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice finding that the state saved nearly $1 billion over the past 10 years because of health-related technology. The cost per day, per inmate, to provide medical care has been reduced from about $19 to $9.67. In California, the only state with a higher incarcerated population than Texas, the cost is $41.25. Other jail and prison systems are turning to telemedicine and EMR technology to reduce the cost of care including Seattle King County that is reported to be the heaviest user of EMR’s in a correctional health care setting, and the Salt Lake City County Jail, which has received “jail of the year” awards in the past and cited for its use of EMR technology to help manage health care for its inmates. One of the most dramatic ways telemedicine enables institutions to lower the costs is by cutting transportation because prisoners can be treated where they are, eliminating the need for guards to accompany them, thus reducing the cost of security. Telemedicine increases efficiencies too thus reducing the cost of potential lawsuits. The presence of an electronic medical record, which can provide the treating physician with the appropriate data at the point of care, also enhances the quality of care. Despite all the benefits the prison systems are touting, telemedicine’s potential benefits extend beyond the cell block holding a promise for humanitarian benefits as well as cost savings. Albert Woodard is CEO of Atlanta-based Business Computer Applications, Inc. a major provider of emedical systems to federal, state and local government health organizations as well as private clinics and practices nationwide. Other articles by Woodard: |
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This is an advertisement rather than an informative article. I would appreciate understanding how the reduction of prison medical costs dropped from $19 to $9.67. Surely his suggestion that electronic medical records--which he sells--did not lower that cost? What else happened? I would like to read a reasonably researched article about this important topic.