Emergency care for inmates surges
Dallas County: Money-saving deal with UTMB has hidden costs
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/071905dnmetjailcosts.2813f03.html
12:50 AM CDT on Tuesday, July 19, 2005
By JAMES M. O'NEILL / The Dallas Morning News
E-mail joneill@dallasnews.comSUMMARY: Back in 2002, when Dallas County commissioners signed UTMB to run jail healthcare, they believed they were going to save big money, but the poor health care they funded for the jail has generated more inmate medical crises, lawsuits and overtime expenses for staff that the county didn't count on.
In 2002 commissioners estimated that the number of inmate emergency visits would be reduced by 20 percent, but instead, because of poor preventative care, lack of medications and poor treatment, there's been a 173 percent increase.
Hidden costs no one predicted include jail staff tied up transporting and guarding inmates at the hospital; longer waiting times for other patients at the hospital; increased competency hearings for mentally ill patients not receiving medication, increased cost of medical experts, county paid attorneys, overcrowded state hospitals, and lawsuits.
Commissioners have hired national medical consultants to find solutions to the jail health problems. In order to pay for more medical staff, better equipment and improvements to the jail medical facilities they might increase by as much as 75 percent the $14 million annually spent on jail health care.
QUOTES:
"Spending money on jail health may raise taxes, but it improves care and solves a lot of problems. ...The commissioners have gotten away with [underfinancing jail health care] for years. The court's in denial. If not for the litigation against them, they'd be doing even less." ~Mike Katz, former president of NAMI-Dallas, a mental health advocacy group.
"We've been doing it on the cheap. It was sold as a cost saving to taxpayers. But unfortunately, there was no way UTMB could make good on their deliverables. You get what you pay for. In the past, we didn't pay for much, and that's what we've gotten." ~Commissioner John Wiley Price, the only commissioner to vote against the UTMB contract in 2002.
"Let's not predicate every decision on the Commissioners Court with, 'Does it save money?' That's how we got into the ditch in the first place. We need to look at value as well. We're going to have to put money into it. Let's do it now and not wait until we're forced to by some outside party." ~Commissioner Maurine Dickey
NOTE: Taxpayers shoulder the high costs of prisoner care, additional costs of lawsuits and increasing costs of jail staff. They should be demanding real and lasting solutions that get to the root of the problem: We need a full reevaluation of laws that promote incarceration in so many circumstances that could be better and more cheaply handled by education, treatment, and harm reduction policies - such as prohibition and its offspring, the drug war. Kay Lee
