Within weeks, Jackson County jailers won’t be doling out pills and peering under prisoners’ tongues to make sure they’ve swallowed their medications.
Commissioners have hired a for-profit provider of correctional health services to oversee care — including dispensing medicines — at the 72-bed Jackson County Jail.
“I’d just as soon be out of hiring and supervising nurses and leave that to the medical professionals,” Sheriff Chip Hall told commissioners during an Aug. 18 work session. “Sheriffs don’t need to be in the nursing business.”
TransformHealth Correctional Services of Statesboro, Ga., will receive $201,405.64 a year. In return, Jackson County government anticipates slashing costs, reducing liability and providing prisoners improved medical and mental-health care. Deputies should ferry fewer prisoners to the hospital, decreasing possibilities of escape and freeing those officers for other duties.
The potential losers in this deal? Local health providers, namely Harris Regional Hospital. TransformHealth has an in-house laboratory, uses a mobile unit for x-rays and ultrasound, and oversees prisoner detox in the jail, not at hospitals.
