Six months after Boyd County Fiscal Court agreed to contract with Southern Health Partners to provide medical services at the Boyd County Detention Center, the new system has reduced medical costs at the jail, decreased the county’s liability in providing health care to inmates and likely resulted in improved medical care for those inmates who most need it.
The jail’s reduced health care costs are the most easily identifiable benefit of the new system. Under the old system, Boyd County was spending an average of $19,263 a month to provide health care for inmates. In all, the county spent just under $176,615 on health care for inmates during the 2007-08 fiscal year.
Under the management and professional care provided by Southern Health Partners, the cost of providing health care to inmates has dropped to $17,284 a month — and one should expect further savings as the new program finds ways to become more efficient.
Under the new program, Southern Health Partners provides a nurse at the jail 12 hours a day. That nurse is able to handle the health care needs of most inmates, but should more intensive care be needed, that decision is made by the registered nurse on duty and not by jail personnel who have no medical training. That not only eliminates needless trips to the hospital or to the offices of health care professionals for inmates whose ailments are not serious and can be successfully treated at the jail, but it also relieves the untrained jail personnel from making the decision on the type of care an inmate needs. The relieves the jail — and the county — of much of the liability it had when jail personnel were deciding what type of treatment inmates needed. Because they lacked the professional expertise and feared the consequences if they made the wrong decision about an inmate’s care, jail personnel typically erred on the side of caution. That, of course, added to the health costs encountered by the jail.
While the reduced costs under the new system was the primary reason for switching to Southern Health Partners, Boyd County Jailer Joe Burchett said that as far has he is concerned, the reduced liability provided under the new systems is the biggest advantage. He said he is elated to “get that part off our backs.”
Providing health care to those incarcerated at the jail will always be expensive, but the professional care provided by Southern Health Partners is reducing costs without negatively impacting the health care inmates receive. In fact, we think the inmates are probably getting better health care at a lower cost for the county. Other counties grappling with runaway costs for providing health care to inmates should look at the savings and other advantages of what Boyd County has done and consider implementing a similar program.
Editorials
Desired results — 05/17/09
New contract for medical care at Boyd jail has reduced costs
- Editorials
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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