By: Shannon Mason
1-30-06 @
http://www.kykernel.com/
Quality health care for inmates in
The network, a partnership between the Kentucky Department
of Corrections, UK and CorrectCare, a private health management firm based in
Lexington, implemented a wireless electronic medical records system last summer
and is planning on launching a related e-consult program within a month, said
Dr. Phil Roeder, professor of family and community medicine in the UK College
of Medicine.
This partnership allowed for the state to save more than $9
million in the first fiscal year, said Dr. Scott Hass, medical director for
Kentucky Department of Corrections.
KCHSN was developed as a way to control secondary, or specialist,
care for the state's inmates.
Before the partnership, the state's 13 prisons and 75 jails
each decided how to provide health care, including secondary care.
Working under these conditions, Haas said the Department of
Corrections sometimes paid more for inmates than what the same procedures would
cost for the average person.
"We were spending more than we wanted without a
choice," Haas said.
In October 2003, the Department of Corrections went to
CorrectCare functions as a network manager, ensuring
availability of doctors, providers and services.
"We've done all that we can to control the cost of
specialty care," Haas said. "Now we need to control the cost and
quality of care inside the institutions."
This is where the "e-phase" of the partnership
comes in, allowing physicians outside to treat inmates still in their
correctional institutions, saving money on inmate transportation and guards.
Through the electronic medical records system, e-consults
will now allow primary care physicians to send specialists information they
need to diagnose patients' conditions, including notes, photographs and other
data.
This provides inmates with secondary care without ever
leaving the institution, Roeder said.
"What used to take four to six weeks can now take place
in four to six days," Haas said. "We can improve the quality and
efficiency of care, and it is more cost efficient."
The electronic medical records system also allows files for
each inmate to be centrally located and efficiently handled.
"If you don't have an electronic system, then how do
you keep up with records?" asked Roeder. "On paper.
You keep paper files filled with information."
The wireless electronic medical records system is currently
up and running in four of the state's 13 prisons: Blackburn Correction Complex
in Lexington, Little Sandy Correctional Complex in Elliott County, the Kentucky
State Reformatory in LaGrange and Luther Luckett
Correctional Complex in LaGrange.
Kentucky's only all-female facility, the Kentucky
Correctional Institution for Women in Pewee Valley, is scheduled to implement
the system starting Feb. 15, making it the fifth state prison on the system,
said Hass.
All of
E-mail smason@kykernel.com