State lines up psychiatrists for prisoners
Posted on Tuesday, July 25, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/161524/
Providing psychiatric care to prison inmates will no longer be a state job after the Board of Corrections decided Monday to hire a private medical contractor to staff the position.
The move came after two psychiatrists gave notice of their resignation recently, leaving the Department of Correction with just three part-time practitioners for about 13, 500 inmates.
No one had applied for the openings, said Wendy Kelley, deputy director for health and correctional services, and the state just can’t pay enough to attract psychiatrists to fill its five budgeted positions.
“The salary is low; you work in areas of the state that are in the boonies, and the job requires a lot of travel. Also, the clientele has something to do with it,” said Dina Tyler, Correction Department spokesman.
Monday’s unanimous vote authorizes an expansion of the department’s $ 43 million contract with Correctional Medical Services Inc. by $ 1, 385, 000. The St. Louis-based company is in the third year of a 10-year contract with the Correction Department to provide medical services to inmates. CMS has been the medical contractor for the state since 1997.
CMS doesn’t disclose its salary packages, said company spokesman Ken Fields, but Kelley said the company’s bid breaks down to about $ 277, 000 per psychiatrist for a compensation package including salary and benefits.
The old package is valued about $ 179, 000 per position, and the department had planned to ask the Legislature for $ 270, 000 per position in January to become more competitive with the private marketplace, she said. An advertisement on the department’s Web site Monday listed the salary for a psychiatrist between $ 100, 000 and $ 143, 000. The company, the nation’s largest provider of correctional medical care with contracts in at least 27 states, “works to make sure our packages are competitive,” said Fields.
CMS has ample experience, Fields said. The company offers psychiatric care in six state prison systems. “This is certainly something that we have done a great deal of,” he said.
Under the agreement, CMS would take over psychiatric services on Aug. 7 and the increased cost of roughly $ 500, 000 through the end of this budget year would be made up by shifting unused salary savings, said Correction Department Director Larry Norris.
“We know they can’t fill [the vacancies ] overnight. They’ll need some time. But we just can’t do it... we got to have coverage,” he said.
CMS might be in a better position to retain medical professionals because they can do the little things — like reimbursing travel from prison to prison — that the state is prohibited from doing under a professional services contract, Tyler said.
The Correction Department was not required to issue a request for proposal to prospective vendors because CMS had an existing contract that was only being expanded with a professional services component, Tyler said.
Even so, prison officials put out feelers to UAMS, but the hospital’s estimate was between $ 400, 000 and $ 500, 000 for one full-time position.
Psychiatrists are the only medical staff authorized to order treatment with psychotropic drugs. Prison officials have said the state prison system mirrors national estimates that 16 percent of inmates — or about 2, 160 — suffer from mental illness.
Board members approved the change after several said they were satisfied no long-term employee would lose state retirement benefits. The amended contract was decided in a special meeting conducted by a teleconference from the director’s office at the department’s Pine Bluff headquarters.