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| Decreased Health Care Costs when Inmates Pay |
| By The Southeast Missourian |
| Published: 03/06/2006 |
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Stop paying the inmates' bills, and they'll stop requesting visits to the hospital; that's what happened at Missouri's Scott County Jail when Sheriff Rick Walter implemented a policy after he took office on Jan. 1, 2005. Cape Girardeau County Sheriff John Jordan said the same change will yield the same results in his county. He decided recently that the jail would no longer pay for doctor visits. In years prior to Walter taking office, the sheriff's department footed the hospital bill for inmates. Missouri law requires sheriff's departments to provide medical care for an inmate, but it leaves counties' the choice of whether to pay the hospital bill. "Once the inmates found out they had to pay, they quit complaining about being sick," Walter said. "Basically they wanted a free ride to see the doctor. Well, those free rides are over." When Walter took office, the Scott County Sheriff's Department hired a part-time nurse who works at the jail and a doctor who comes in once a week. This resulted in fewer trips to the hospital and saves the county money. "That's one thing I really wanted to implement in the jail, good health care," Walter said. "If the inmates want to visit the nurse or a doctor, then they have to pay a co-payment. "Once they found out they had to pay, they decided they weren't really sick," he said. In Cape Girardeau County, Jordan began charging inmates $10 per doctor visits in 1996. Now that the jail has a full-time health care staff available, inmates are charged co-payments of $10 for every visit to the physician inside the facility, $3 to see the on-staff nurse and $4 for any prescriptions. "We saw a decrease when we implemented the co-pay policy, and now we expect there will be a decrease in trips to the hospital," Jordan said. "People who are sick will still want to go and people who just want to see the sun will decide they don't want to go." Jordan said most decisions to send an inmate to the hospital are made by the staff nurses or doctors. The Cape Girardeau County Jail expenditures were more than $65,000 under budget in 2005. This year the jail has a total budget of $706,600 -- last year's budget was $775,550. Even with $10 million in budget surplus coffers, county officials are still looking for ways to cut costs. |
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