Paul Sanelle gets life in prison
An audit released Monday showed that Washington County taxpayers received at least $350,000 less in value than they should have under terms of a contract governing healthcare for inmates at the county jail. The audit recommended 30 steps to address that and other identified problems.
(Benjamin Brink)
A Washington County administrative department's failure to monitor a contract governing inmate healthcare cost the county significant amounts of money and regularly left inmates without levels of medical care specified in the contract, according to an audit released Monday.
The county's Department of Health and Human Services, which used to administer the contract, has been stripped of that responsibility. The Finance Department is now in charge of overseeing the contract.
The 34-page report, released by auditor John Hutzler's office, found that the county failed to receive at least $350,000 worth of contracted staffing from fiscal years 2009 through 2012.
Failure to enforce those minimum staffing requirements, in turn, may also have increased other county costs for jail healthcare, the audit found.
For instance, inmates were more often sent outside the jail for care when the jail physician and nurse practitioner ended up providing fewer than the minimum specific hours.
"Of particular concern to me was that on many shifts, particularly at night, there was no registered nurse available at the jail, despite contract language calling for there to be," Hutzler said.
Examination of jail records for fiscal year 2012, for instance, showed that no registered nurse was on duty nearly one-fifth of the time.
The contract also required that all jail healthcare services be reviewed and evaluated "for quality of care through established and regularly performed audits," the report stated. "We found no evidence that these audits had been performed."
The auditor said he is satisfied that the county is "now moving aggressively" to implement the 30 different recommendations outlined in his report. Those items include strengthening contract language, improving contract administration, controlling costs and avoiding budget overruns.
Corizon Health, the company that still holds the contract to provide healthcare to county jail inmates, will be free to join others in bidding for a new contract when it is renewed next July, Hutzler said.
The county employee who supervised the contract has since retired, he said. Hutzler declined to name the employee, saying, "I don't generally identify individuals in audit reports. That's not really the goal of the audit."
Corizon Health officials, in a statement provided to The Oregonian, said they are aware of the audit's findings.
"We take our partnership with Washington County seriously and care deeply about the quality of care at the facility," the statement read. "Our goal is always to provide quality healthcare to our patients."
Philip Bransford, a county spokesman, said the county differs with Hutzler's $350,000 figure regarding unrealized services at the jail.
"There are variables not captured in the report that bring additional context to that number," he said.
In comments at the end of the audit, the county administrator's office generally agreed with the report's recommendations, noting that clarification in a number of areas is needed to ensure full compliance.
Included in that list is the recognized need to "validate the results of the vendor's quality assurance process" by periodically reviewing randomly selected cases.
The only area of clear disagreement concerned the audit's call for scrapping the mandatory fee now charged to inmates for an incoming health screening.
Sheriff Pat Garrett, in his response, disagreed, saying that the fee is "supported by state and federal law," complies with national standards and helps control jail costs.
The Oregonian has written previously of lawsuits filed by Washington County Jail inmates, including one alleging medical negligence.
In a separate federal court lawsuit, a former jail inmate alleged that jail workers failed to treat his schizophrenia, anxiety, tuberculosis and other conditions.
-- Dana Tims