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Luzerne County’s correctional services division is once again soliciting proposals to provide inmate health care services — this time with beefed-up requirements for mental health coverage, records show.
Six entities had submitted proposals to handle the services in April 2018, but the administration halted a selection to consider feedback from outside mental health experts.
The outside input was warranted to ensure prison’s protocols and services properly detect potential suicide and other inmate risks, county Chief Solicitor Romilda Crocamo has said. Four female inmates had died from June 2017 to January 2018 — three ruled suicides and the fourth deemed accidental.
Solicitation additions include a requirement for a psychiatrist to be physically present at the prison and/or available through telecommunications technology at least two hours per week. If the telecommunication option is chosen, the psychiatrist must be physically at the prison at least two hours per month.
Vendors also must provide a full-time psychiatric nurse practitioner or physician assistant on site.
The county also wants a psychology department staffed with at least three mental health professionals Monday through Friday and one during the weekend shift, the new solicitation says.
If inmates on behavioral or suicide watch have scheduled releases, the company’s mental health professional must perform a suicide risk assessment. When inmates are in danger of harming themselves or others and meet criteria for voluntary or involuntary psychiatric hospitalization commitment, the professional must petition for the commitment and arrange a psychiatric evaluation at an approved crisis center, it says.
Mental health professionals also must perform daily assessments of all inmates on suicide and behavioral watch, provide therapeutic services, manage cases of inmates active with the psychology department and seek approval from the psychiatrist to remove inmates from suicide watch, it says.
Prior to an inmate’s release, the professionals must develop an after-care plan that includes assistance securing medical insurance, housing and community-based psychiatric treatment.
A full-time health services administrator will be responsible for identifying inmates at high risk due to suicidality, substance use detoxification, noncompliance with medication or treatment and “organic brain issues,” another solicitation addition says.
A detailed detoxification protocol is required under the new solicitation, which includes a suggested format for inmates withdrawing from alcohol, benzodiazepines, cocaine and opioids.
Interested vendors must submit proposals by June 28.
As options are reviewed, county Manager C. David Pedri recently signed a six-month contract extension with the current provider — Kansas-based Correct Care Solutions, which has been renamed Wellpath LLC.
The company is paid $197,688 per month to provide a range of services and personnel, including a medical and mental health team to perform inmate screening, health assessments and examinations. Prescription and non-prescription drugs, emergency ambulance transport and other medical treatment also are included in the package.
Council hired the company in March 2015 as part of a prior administration’s recommendation to partially outsource the services to save the county approximately $600,000 annually.
The county continues to employ unionized licensed practical nurses at the prison on Water Street in Wilkes-Barre and the nearby minimum offenders building on Reichard Street, but they take direction from Wellpath, according to the county.
In addition to inmates impacted by the opioid epidemic, more offenders with mental health disabilities have landed in the county prison system in recent years due to the closure and downsizing of state hospitals in favor of community-based treatment programs that in many cases never materialized, officials have said.