Inmate-Care Privatization to Be Studied

Article Tools Print This Page | Comments(0) | Suggest a Story

By Salt Lake Tribune

Published: 03/18/2003

Utah Corrections officials are willing to help examine whether hiring an outside company to provide medical care to the state's inmates would save money -- but maintain their award-winning program does not need fixing.
On February 10, lawmakers agreed to study privatizing Utah's prison health care and to seek up $15,000 in funding from the Executive Appropriations Committee. The study, to be completed by July 1, will be supervised by the legislative fiscal analyst.
The move follows a presentation last week by Mont Evans, a former lawmaker and Corrections employee who now is a lobbyist for St. Louis, Mo.-based Correctional Medical Services Inc.
CMS does business with prisons in 31 states and oversees the entire prison medical system in 11, including Idaho and Wyoming, according to its Web site. It vows to save states money through cost-control measures, its national buying power and focusing on prevention and early detection.
Physician Richard Garden, the Utah Department of Corrections' clinical director, told the Executive Offices and Criminal Justice Appropriations Subcommittee last week he welcomes the study. But he added, 'We feel that we can do a better job than any private service.'
In Utah, prison medical care has a troubled history. Two inmates sued in 1989, alleging systemwide flaws in medical and mental health care. Settlements mandated more medical personnel, beds and staff training in mental health issues.
New lawsuits were filed in 1997, after a schizophrenic inmate died after being held in a restraining chair for 16 hours and another inmate complained of being strapped to a board for 85 days. The suits were resolved with $200,000 and $25,000 settlements, and in 1999, Corrections opened its $2.9 million, 144-bed Olympus Mental Health Facility. Now, Garden and his colleagues believe the department has implemented money-saving measures without sacrificing quality of care for state inmates -- a view that some of its once-biggest critics espouse as well.
Among the initiatives:
* Increased preventative care, which Garden credits for a 40 percent drop in inmate emergency room visits over two years.
* More than 35 HIV-positive inmates are seen monthly by an HIV specialist from the University of Utah.
* Savings have allowed officials to increase the number of inmates treated for Hepatitis C.
* Improved screening of new inmates for mental illness.
* A 40 percent decrease in medication prescribed for the mentally ill and increased therapy instead, thanks to a dropped 'when in doubt, medicate' theory, Garden said.
The prison's Bureau of Clinical Services received Corrections' two highest department awards in 2001 and plans to present a research manuscript to the National Commission on Correctional Health Care. The Disability Law Center, which joined the 1989 lawsuit over Utah's treatment of mentally ill inmates, would be opposed to any privatization, said John Pace, senior litigation attorney.
'In general . . . clinical services are being operated much better than they ever have been before,' Pace said. 'We would be gravely concerned whenever human service functions are privatized and made subject to profit motives.'
The Utah chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union echoes his concern, noting inmates have an 8th Amendment constitutional right to adequate medical care. Executive director Dani Eyer also points to recent national concern over the threat inmates pose to public health if they are released without proper care for contagious diseases, including AIDS, tuberculosis and hepatitis.
'The complexity of these matters calls for continued policy considerations by public officials who can consider the entire public health picture, not for a delegation of these matters to for-profit organizations,' she said.

Comments:

No comments have been posted for this article.

Login to let us know what you think

MARKETPLACE search vendors | advanced search