“I need to go to the hospital,” he told his mother in a jailhouse phone call. “I’m gonna die in here.”
His death was the second in two months that Pugh and nurses Betty Riner and Lynne Williams considered preventable, internal jail memos and emails produced in litigation show. That August, the trio met with the sheriff and accused Corizon of prioritizing profits over lives. Yet an inmate died from a treatable heart condition after his doctor’s requests for hospitalization were denied. A guard was crippled by an inmate who hadn’t gotten her meds. Another inmate died from a blood clot in his leg 32 hours after he crawled across the floor begging to go to the hospital.
The Reuters review is the most definitive examination to date revealing the risks that have emerged as hundreds of jails have embraced the multi-billion dollar correctional healthcare industry and its promises of quality care and controlled costs. It is part of a larger Reuters examination finding that two-thirds of dead inmates, including Loflin, never got their day in court for the alleged offenses on which they were held.
Hyman said Corizon’s statisticians did not believe the variance in death rates for jails contracting with Corizon was “statistically significant.” While every jail death is “significant,” the company disputed Reuters’ methodology and “resulting assumptions.” By 2010, nearly half the U.S. jails surveyed by Reuters had turned to privatized medical care. By 2018, 62% got privatized services.
Yet even as the industry’s reach expanded, no large-scale studies have been conducted to assess privatization’s impact on inmate mortality. To answer that question, Reuters surveyed 523 jails for healthcare and death data from 2008 to 2019. It explored all U.S. jails with 750 or more inmates, plus the 10 largest jails in nearly every state.
Overall, facilities with care managed by the biggest jail medical providers had 17 deaths per 10,000 inmates, compared to 13 deaths in publicly-run units. NaphCare said it “has never compromised patient care for profit and we never will.” In an interview, CEO Brad McLane said his family-owned company shields itself from pressure from outside investors as it operates in counties with “the biggest challenges,” such as opioid outbreaks.