PRISON REFORM State reports shortcomings in medical care of inmates

How to pay for implementation of changes is an issue.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- A state report has confirmed numerous shortcomings of the health care treatment of Ohio's 44,537 inmates while detailing 140 recommendations to reform care for prisons.
"It's almost back to basics," Thomas Stickrath, the deputy prisons director who led a 15-member team that wrote the report that was released Tuesday. "Inmates will get more timely access to health care. In general, they will see a higher level of care in prisons."
Gov. Bob Taft requested the internal review Aug. 27 after The Columbus Dispatch and WBNS-TV found a pattern of inadequate care, wrongful deaths and dubious doctors in 33 state prisons.
The 148-page report includes plans to raise standards of care, to prevent outbreaks of communicable diseases, and to reduce the number of inmates waiting for treatment or surgery in a prison wing at the Ohio State University Medical Center.
The report suggests a pilot program to hire some doctors as civil-service workers and to again explore a system in which Ohio State could hire and provide prison doctors. Ohio State has rejected the concept before.
Employee system
Background checks would be done annually on contract workers, including doctors, and a system would be set up to prevent dismissed doctors from working in other prisons.
The report also calls for stricter monitoring of medical providers and careful examination of their records when awarding contracts. The state spends $122 million a year on prison health care.
To improve oversight and ease staffing shortages, those hired would include an assistant medical director, a nursing director, 24 clinic nurses, 10 medical-records employees and 21 registered nurses assigned as quality-assurance coordinators.
Prisons director Reggie Wilkinson said that putting the recommendations in place would cost millions of dollars and that the staff is working with state budget officials to figure out how to pay for them.