The number of prisoners in Oregon who saw an off-site medical specialist swelled to about 1,600 in August as the state Department of Corrections works to reduce a backlog of prisoners who need specialty care, a top corrections administrator told lawmakers Tuesday.
Corrections Director Michael Reese and Kevin Bovenkamp, the state’s new assistant director of health services, updated the lawmakers about the state’s long troubled prison health care system.
Bovenkamp pointed to the said more prisoners are receiving off-site specialty care and compared the latest figures to April when 1,100 people were seen off-site.
He also said Oregon is set to begin rolling out an electronic medical records system next month. Prisoner health records are now maintained in paper files.
“The department’s put a major effort into getting more people off site and closing those timelines down, which is going to help with some of the quality and concerns complaints from the system,” Bovenkamp said.
Prisoner health care in Oregon has suffered from years of mismanagement and a toxic work environment among medical providers, leading to substandard care for inmates suffering from ailments of all kinds, from asthma to genital herpes and cancer to traumatic head injuries. The state has paid millions to settle claims over questionable care.
Earlier this year, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported that more than half of the state’s prison doctors were on paid administrative leave, had been fired or resigned in the previous year.
Reese last year responded to concerns about the system by firing two top administrators charged with managing prison health care. The terminations followed a blistering report questioning the competence of Warren Roberts, who oversaw medical services, and his boss, Joe Bugher.
Bugher’s successor, Bovenkamp, said his staff is working through recommendations by an outside corrections health care consultant, the Falcon Group based in Chicago.
Over the summer, it released a report that described the level of prisoner medical care as fragmented, disorganized and inefficient.
Reese told lawmakers that the Corrections Department worked with the consultants on the final recommendations, which prompted Rep. Thủy Trần, D-Portland, to question whether the review represents an independent assessment of the prison health care system.
“From what I am hearing the Falcon report is not really an independent review of our system but it is pick and choose so it fits our pocketbook,” she said. “The recommendations may not be as optimal to solve our problem but just enough to fit our pocketbook.”
Reese defended the state’s collaboration with the consultants, saying administrators wanted to ensure the recommendations fit within the agency’s budget constraints.
“The work that we did with them was to make sure they didn’t come at us with a report that said you have to do it all today because that’s not possible,” Reese said.
Falcon identified numerous priorities, including an overhaul of internal panels of medical providers who determine whether inmates can see outside specialists; giving providers more discretion regarding referrals; and allowing a range of clinical requests to be referred to outside providers without committee approval.
Bovenkamp told lawmakers that he’s working to revise how decisions about health care are made and intends to “make sure it’s clear to all staff and (incarcerated people) and everybody else how we’re getting the work done and who’s making the decisions.”
Bovenkamp, who worked in Washington state government, including as a corrections administrator, was hired over the summer. His salary is $240,276.
He told lawmakers that the system faces significant problems. He noted, for instance, a lack of privacy in the prison health clinics.
“I don’t know that I’ve seen so many challenging facilities in other places I visit around the country,” he said.