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By ERIC LADLEY Times Leader Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 08, 2000 Page: 3A
JACKSON TWP. – Wilkes-Barre General Hospital will consider denying health
care to inmates from the State Correctional Institution at Dallas if the
prison’s medical contractor doesn’t pay its outstanding bills, Wyoming Valley
Health Care System officials said Monday.
A December letter from the prison warden to the state Department of
Corrections lists the amount due at $500,000.
“In the event the system is unable to resolve the matter with CPS (the
prison’s medical contractor) satisfactorily, we’ll need to re-evaluate our
ability to provide elective services to the inmate population,” health system
spokeswoman Joanne Quaglia said Monday.
Emergency room care wouldn’t be affected, and no inmates have yet been
denied care, she said.
However, officials on both sides said they are trying to resolve the
payment dispute.
“We are working really hard together, and it’s obvious we want to continue
our relationship with them,” Quaglia said.
The prison’s medical contractor wouldn’t give a specific time frame for
when the costs were incurred, but said all bills from 1999 are being reviewed.
Glen Jeffes, the operations director for the contractor, Correctional
Physician Services, Inc., said some substantial payments have been made, but
the hospital has overcharged the contractor.
Jeffes said the amount owed is less than $500,000.
“They owe us and we owe them,” he said. “We’re are working together to
reconcile the matter. Once we do that, we’ll pay them.”
Jeffes said between $200,000 and $300,000 has been paid, and another
payment was sent out Monday to cover outpatient costs. He wouldn’t say how
much additional money has been sent or how much is still owed. He said it is
significantly less than $500,000.
Still at issue are inpatient costs, which cover extensive hospital stays.
Wilkes-Barre General Hospital actually charged the prison the higher medical
rates in 1999 that were supposed to take effect in January 2000, Jeffes said.
He refused to speculate on how much was still owed, because the rates still
have to be adjusted, he said. He wouldn’t release the rates.
Jeffes predicts the inpatient costs will soon be resolved and that no
inmates will be denied health care.
The hospital system would say only that the prison was “significantly in
arrears.”
The hospital first informed top prison officials at a Dec. 17 meeting that
it would cut off health care for the 1,800-inmate institution if it failed to
pay its bills, which totaled $500,000, according to a letter obtained by the
Times Leader. The letter is from Dallas prison Superintendent Ben Varner to
state Corrections Department Deputy Secretary-Eastern Region Dennis Erhard.
Varner expressed dismay, citing the lack of other hospitals to treat
inmates from the prison in Jackson Township.
Prison officials were first informed of the debt at the December meeting,
prison spokesman Kenneth Burnett said. The prison promptly notified the state,
which then notified CPS, based in Blue Bell, Montgomery County.
Call Ladley at 829-7122.