Prison Healthcare: Cutting Expenditure

Prison Healthcare: Cutting Expenditure

The current total administrative costs for the department of prison health, and the per-prisoner cost of medical care

Prison healthcare is at the core intersection of the state pressing priorities. Ranging from fighting diseases to ensuring public safety, promoting both behavioral and physical health, and from making a near-perfect budget that helps in cutting down wastes to investing in areas that are cost-effective with long-term benefits (Stuckler, Basu, & McKee, 2010).

Based on our data, prison healthcare has more than 21,000 inmates incarcerated annually. Sixty percent of these inmates are sentenced to serve for more than a year. More than 10% are served for half a year. This means that the facility carries 12,600 inmates every year since prison is only for those serving one year and above. Jail is for those serving half a year in prison, which is 6,300 in number.

The manners in which services are delivered to this category of inmates directly affect the prison healthcare budget because of the involved expensive treatments given to the sick inmates. Some prisoners are treated for the prevailing conditions, increased costs due to delay in providing therapy to an inmate, the financial and legal consequences of violating inmate’s constitutional rights.

The Expected Type of Healthcare Costs and Cost Distribution

On average, this prison healthcare expenditure per year averages at $48,500,131 to provide healthcare services to the inmates, including substance use treatment, dental problems, mental challenges, and medical treatment. The expected healthcare costs based on the demographics also include pre-incarceration treatments to avoid legal charges on failing to treat inmates on time, staff salaries, fixed costs, bulk purchases, utility payment, and the disease burdens.

Patients characteristics and demographics, which is the composition of individual inmates do have a significant effect on the health care services to be provided in the prisons. The main predictors for this population include sex, which is male and female, the age which is aged and young, and the health status.

Strategies to decrease the amount of loss

Based on my assessment and based on the demographic data of the prisons, I have identified creative and effective strategies to deliver healthcare to the prisoners, control the costs and ensure public safety as a primary concern. Here are the four strategies suggested that would produce positive outcomes in my state:

Using telehealth innovations: With the advances in the healthcare sector, it is time the prisons adopt technologies in their operations to reduce costs in healthcare, ensure efficiencies in healthcare delivery, and increase the quality of healthcare. For example, using digitally transmitted and video conferencing data to facilitate the inmates’ access to care ad to minimize transportation and guarding costs.

The healthcare for prisons should consider making outsourcing agreements with other expert agencies to increase efficiency in service delivery and to reduce costs on buying some equipment, maintenance costs, and to increase accountability. Outsourcing training of the healthcare staff to the appropriate body would be very critical in improving quality and reducing costs by avoiding expensive providers.

We are enrolling inmates who are eligible for Medicaid and billing the program for services that qualify.

The facility needs to use geriatric parole and medial policies to release offenders that are perceived to every sick or frail and may cause a public safety risk. This is feasible because the hospital will do away with keeping incarcerated inmates in the prison treatment program for longer than they should, yet they can go and get their mediation through appropriate means and not through the prison bill.

Strategies to decrease the probability that financial loss will occur in this population

Here are the proposals to reduce financial loss as new measure strategies or preventive measures; first, the number one priority should be to reduce the number of inmates and the period of stay in prison. Second, consider expanding the prisoners’ housing and increasing the budget of the facilities (Jegers et al., 2002). Lastly, Consider taking excess prisoners to other prison facilities.

The main risks to decreasing financial loss include many regulations, Competition from other clinics, overcapacity, and Lack of skilled professionals.

If the environment shifts in an unpredictable way, say more hospitals in the region establishing their own advanced prison health facilities, too much sic patients that the facility cannot handle in a day, and the numerous demands and regulations by different authorities, the facility will be impacted in different ways. First, the prison health facilities will not be in a position to provide quality services to patients if the daily capacity is not observed. Therefore, the prison management must strictly follow the capacity of ethical demand. Government regulations are punitive and may eat into the hospital wing profits. Lack of professionals like cancer physicians may also reduce the quality of care.

Therefore, for this project to work, the prison must; employ enough number of professionals to provide quality services in the facility and only offer services within the capacity it can handle

Universal Healthcare Insurance Implementation Effect on Prison Healthcare Costs

Under the current healthcare reforms, about one out of six are expected to enroll in Medicaid, and one out of ten are expected to enroll in the qualified healthcare plans via the marketplace healthcare insurance will have been detained in prison in the past year. The people who are jailed spend most of their time in and out of incarceration, and they do have significant levels of mental health problems, chronic physical issues, and substance abuse challenges (Henrichson & Delaney, 2012). Historically, this group of people are not insured and do not have access to regular health care.

Universal Healthcare may not change the jails’ healthcare quality. However, the provision of universal healthcare would have a positive effect on healthcare access before and after incarceration. Te universal healthcare would, therefore, positively impact the healthcare of the inmates over the long-term because of the increased access to care.

The provision of universal healthcare insurance would also reduce prison healthcare costs. To achieve this, the healthcare provider should need careful coordination and planning among the prison health care programs, the marketplace, and Medicaid. By having the community providers and the jails using electronic health records could be useful in ensuring that treatments are consistent irrespective of where the patient lives. This means that the prisons will not cover the health costs of the prisoners. The health plans and the policymakers would also ensure that the care is continuous in their network by integrating the safety-net providers contracted to provide a car to the inmates in prisons.

References

Henrichson, C., & Delaney, R. (2012). The price of prisons: What incarceration costs taxpayers. Fed. Sent’g Rep., 25, 68.

Jegers, M., Kesteloot, K., De Graeve, D., & Gilles, W. (2002). A typology for provider payment systems in health care. Health policy, 60(3), 255-273.

Stuckler, D., Basu, S., & McKee, M. (2010). Budget crises, health, and social welfare programs. BMJ, 340, c3311.