Ventura County Sheriff’s Office hopes to reduce recidivism and prevent suicide among prisoners local prisons under an enhanced prisoner health care contract approved last week.
The district board of supervisors unanimously approved the five-year agreement with the Nashville-based Wellpath on Tuesday after Assistant Sheriff Rob Davidson outlined planned improvements in patient care.
The contract, which takes effect on July 1, will cost $ 17.7 million in the first year. The pact is expected to reach about $ 18 million in the coming years to account for inflation.
Among the highlights:
- The medical, dental and mental staff will increase to 74, which is about 25% more than last July. Fifteen of these jobs were added on Tuesday to the board’s budget for the next fiscal year, which begins on Friday. Additional staff is needed to operate a health unit at Todd Road Prison near Santa Paula, which is due to open early next year.
- The availability of mental health services by licensed clinicians will increase from 16 o’clock per day to 24 hours at Ventura Main Prison and approximately double to 16 hours per day at Todd Road Prison.
- Wellpath must pay penalties if it does not meet the standards of patient care specified in the contract. For example, the company must pay the county $ 1,500 each time a symptomatic patient is not evaluated by a mental health professional within 24 hours of arriving at the jail.
- Individual counseling will be provided to prisoners, in line with the trend across the country.
- The responsibility for the continuous monitoring of suicide prisoners will be transferred from the security staff to the medical staff.
Davidson said the contract represents a significant improvement in the quality of care for mentally ill prisoners.
“In our prisons, I’ll be honest, we take very, very good care,” he said on board. “Our challenge is in the area of mental health. We really feel that the area of mental health is what drives part of our relapse.”
Public Defender Claudia Bautista, whose office represents many of the inmates, said she supported the sheriff’s plan.
Will it work? I don’t know, “she said in an interview Friday. “What has been done in the past does not work.”
Bautista said that ideally, mentally ill people should not be in prison. However, she said the proposal breaks new ground in the county.
“This is a multidisciplinary approach to people who come to their facility in a psychiatric crisis,” she said. “This level of response is really unprecedented here in Ventura. That’s why I’m optimistic. The reality is that prisons house people suffering from mental illness and something needs to be done to help them.”
Bautista was particularly pleased to see that the sheriff’s office intended to minimize the use of padded safety cages.
Actively, suicidal people are isolated in their cells and checked every 15 minutes to avoid injury until they can be stabilized. Sheriff’s officials said the state required prisons to have such cells, but hoped they could move away from them with additional clinical treatment.
About 150 of the approximately 1,300 inmates at the two prisons have been diagnosed with serious mental illness, Davidson said. About 40 percent of the prison’s population is reported to be taking some form of mental illness, Sheriff Bill Ayub said.
Ayub said he was leading his efforts to upgrade health services after noticing an unusually high number of inmate deaths in 2020. In the first phase of improvements last fall, the county added $ 2.5 million to its contract with Wellpath. to pay for more nurses, therapists and other health care staff.
Explore:The county is expanding inmate health care after the death toll has risen
Six prisoners died in 2020, half of them suicide, according to the district medical court records.
In 2021, five deaths were reported, all due to natural or accidental causes. So far this year, one death has been reported, which was found to be of natural causes.
Ayub said the sheriff’s office was not forced by lawyers to make the changes, but decided to do it themselves.
“It was an introspective look,” he said.
The sheriff’s office brought service levels up to the standards recommended by the National Commission for Corrective Health Care, which Ayub described as the “gold standard.”
Last year, the Supervisory Board hired the committee to audit and monitor the care of prisoners. Wellpath must pay $ 25,000 if prisons are not accredited within 18 months, according to the contract.
Alabama-based NaphCare was the only other company to submit a proposal. Managers in the county’s behavioral health department, which provides outpatient services in the community, decided not to offer to take care of mental health care in prisons.
After meeting with the sheriff, behavioral health care decided that it was best for one person to meet the needs of mental and physical health in the interest of caring for the whole person, said Assistant Director Loretta Denering.
Ayub is due to step down in January after losing the June 7th election to a commander. James Freihoff. At a board hearing on Tuesday, Freihoff said he would support efforts to improve prison health care.
Kathleen Wilson covers the Ventura County government, including the county’s health care system, politics and social services. Contact her at [email protected] or 805-437-0271.