Michigan has awarded a three-year, $326 million contract to a Tennessee company to treat prisoners with medical problems.   A state board approved the contract Tuesday, which means the company currently overseeing prison health care will be replaced starting in April.   Brentwood, Tenn.-based Prison Health Services will take over for St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Services.

CMS has hired doctors and others to see Michigan prisoners for about a decade. But a year ago, an independent review found that most doctors, nurse practitioners and physician assistants were seeing too few prisoners a day.   The review was ordered by Gov. Jennifer Granholm in 2006 after reports of inmates dying because of inadequate care.

“The monitoring team continues to be concerned over the lack of stable and effective leadership at the vendor level,” independent monitor Joshua W. Martin III said in a report issued Friday. “As the monitoring team emphasized in previous reports, without stable and effective leadership, the state will be significantly hampered in its attempts to become compliant with the [memorandum of agreement between the United States Department of Justice and the State of Delaware]” …

Calling the report balanced, Department of Correction Commissioner Carl Danberg agreed there were problems with the medical vendor, Correctional Medical Services, and said he has spoken with the St. Louis-based company.  “I have addressed my displeasure at the pace of progress directly to the CEO of CMS, the vendor, in very clear and uncertain terms,” Danberg said. Despite his displeasure, Danberg extended the $39 million contract with CMS for another year, saying it would cost an additional $4 million to seek a new vendor. With the state facing a $606 million budget deficit, Danberg said, it would be difficult to argue for a new contract …

Friday’s report was not entirely critical.

It found that Delaware is still trying to maintain areas of improvement highlighted in the previous report, adding that the overall timeliness of certain screening processes is “fairly good.” The monitor also found sanitation efforts have improved, although “some problem areas remain.” And the state continues to take action to remedy some of the issues surrounding the availability and use of space needed for the provision of health-related services.

The Volusia County Council and County Manager Jim Dinneen made a surprise move Thursday to take steps to open the mental-health portion of the jail health care contract to Act Corp. The arrangement could be a subcontract with Prison Health Services or a separate contract with the county.

The move brought praise from local community leaders who for months have called for a change. County administration and the corrections division were originally recommending extending Prison Health Services’ overall contract for 18 months until further review can be made. Its contract ends Sept. 30.

Prison Health Services, which along with the county has faced criticism and lawsuits over the care of inmates, will negotiate over the next 45 days with officials at Act and Stewart-Marchman Center, the area’s main mental-health and substance-abuse providers, which are merging services in October. Prison Health Services will continue providing mental-health care until the county approves a new arrangement…

Since Act many times treats the clients that end up in the jail and when they leave, County Chairman Frank Bruno said, “If we can put this together, it will be a win-win for the whole community.”  Councilman Jack Hayman said he’s had serious concerns with Prison Health Services. He agreed working with Act is a “first step in the right direction.”

More details at the News-Journal.

The state Treasury Department notified Correctional Medical Services on Friday that it planned to replace it with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the state’s medical school … UMDNJ already provides mental health services for state inmates.  CMS, whose contract expired last night, had sought a 4.73 percent increase to cover costs associated with caring for the 27,600 inmates in state prisons and an additional 14,000 inmates being held in county facilities until a state cell is available. “The state has decided that it is in its best interest to contract with the University of Medicine and Dentistry to provide all of the inmate health care services,” wrote Alice Small, acting director of Treasury’s Division of Purchase and Property.

The move ends a contentious 11-year relationship with CMS that was launched during then-Gov. Christie Whitman’s push to privatize government services. It comes months after the state auditor and the state inspector general issued separate reports critical of the company.

More opinion from both sides in the Star-Ledger article.

Clinics on Rikers Island now are run by [Prison Health Services] whose contract was just renewed for another three years. Though the quality of care has improved since the days when a private hospital ran the clinics, many advocates argue the system still has an attitude of us versus them, of prisoner versus guard and of control versus the powerless — certainly not conducive to quality care.

It is a massive job.

At any one time on Rikers, there are approximately 14,000 inmates, adding up to about 100,000 admissions in a given year. They are not mass murderers, but alleged drunk drivers or drug addicts, among others convicted of misdemeanors, and about 80 percent are being detained prior to trial. About a quarter are mentally ill, according to the health department, and a third are seen as extremely frail, plagued by severe drug addictions or chronic illnesses. An average inmate stays 40 days, but the most frequent discharge from Rikers Island is on day one. The population is constantly changing, moving from facility to facility or from imprisonment to freedom … All nine jails on the island have their own clinic, and the whole population is served by one infirmary. Inmates in more serious condition are sent [to city hospitals].

Future plans are in hand:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made public health a hallmark of his administration, and that focus has had an effect on Rikers Island … “If we can improve the health of those that are incarcerated than we can improve the health of the communities that they come from,” said Louise Cohen, deputy commissioner for health care access and improvement.

There is a great deal more information at the Gotham Gazette.

America Service Group Inc. (ASGR) on Wednesday said the company’s operating subsidiary, Prison Health Services, Inc. and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Corrections have agreed to extend by five years the term of the current contract under which PHS provides general healthcare and specialized medical services to the nearly 44,000 inmates in the custody of the Department. Annual revenues for 2006 under the contract were $68.5 million. The contract will now expire on August 31, 2013.

Continued poor performance by the Department of Correction’s medical vendor could hamper the department’s efforts to get out from under federal supervision by the U.S. Justice Department, according to a new report by an independent monitor overseeing the state prison system. Correctional Medical Services, a private company Delaware pays millions a year to provide medical care to inmates, suffers from a “lack of stable and effective leadership,” Independent Monitor Joshua W. Martin III wrote in a 229-page report released today … While Martin found that the DOC has made some improvements, he concluded that many CMS staff lacked proper credentials or were working outside their areas of expertise.

The Delaware News-Journal has more information.