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| Panel Faults Progress of NY Prison |
| By New York Times |
| Published: 06/25/2001 |
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Medical treatment given to 13,500 city inmates is not improving as quickly as city officials had hoped when they hired a Tennessee-based, for-profit company six months ago to revamp medical and mental health services at Rikers Island, officials on an oversight board said recently. The death last week of a 37-year-old inmate who had to wait an hour and 10 minutes before an ambulance was called has only heightened broader concerns about the performance of the company, Prison Health Services. The company started work in January on a three-year, $314 million contract. Members of the Board of Correction, a citizens' committee appointed by the mayor and the City Council to monitor treatment of inmates, discussed several incidents yesterday at their monthly meeting, including the recent escape of a prisoner, the suicide of an inmate on May 22, a recent accidental gun discharge by a correction officer and a fight between two captains at the Brooklyn House of Detention. They also discussed the death of Anthony Rizzo of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the third inmate to die this year after being attacked by another prisoner. 'It was most unusual, most unusual,' David A. Schulte, who has served on the Correction Board since the early 1960's, said of the many incidents that needed to be discussed. Delays in getting inmates to specialists for needed medical treatment and the rapid turnover among top-level Prison Health Services staff members - three different medical directors so far - had already led some to question the company's services. 'I am having increasing concerns that the delivery of services is not at the level where it ought to be,' said David Lenefsky, a board member. 'The warning signs are there.' But several board members said the company did appear to be making efforts to correct the problems. Colleen Roche, a Prison Health Services spokeswoman, said the company remained 'absolutely committed to quality care for the inmates.' Board members seemed most concerned about what they perceived as shortcomings in health care, especially since they had had high expectations for Prison Health Services, which was brought in after a trouble-plagued three-year contract with St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx. Ernesto Marrero Jr., the executive of the Health and Hospitals Corporation who monitors the performance of Prison Health Services and helped draft the company's contract, said that he too was somewhat disappointed with the company's work so far. Health care has improved, he said, citing as one example the assignment of doctors during all shifts at each of the 10 jails on Rikers Island, instead of merely the physician's assistants who sometimes filled in during the St. Barnabas tenure. But Mr. Marrero said there had been sporadic problems getting inmates to specialists, like cardiologists or neurologists, within the time recommended by doctors who first see the inmates needing more advanced care. |
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