CorrHealth is excited to celebrate their two-year anniversary with San Miguel County where they provide comprehensive inmate medical, mental, ancillary, and community-based healthcare programs and services to inmates incarcerated in the county’s detention center. Understanding and having a strategic plan to manage the ongoing challenges regarding employee recruitment, retention, and delivering professional and correctional-based healthcare programs and services that rural counties like San Miguel face is critical to ensuring the county’s inmate patients receive a high standard of care. San Miguel County is one of the counties throughout the state who has earned and maintained accreditation by New Mexico County’s Adult Detention Professional Standards, which is a set of standards that CorrHealth meets in order for the county to retain its accredited status and benefit from enhanced liability coverage from the state. San Miguel County is also the home for the New Mexico State Mental Hospital, which is the only one in the state. This offers additional challenges to the detention center and the community due to the constant influx of new inmates that arise from patients who have been displaced in San Miguel County by their release at the hospital.

“CorrHealth’s vision goes hand-in-hand with ours because we are both focused on recruiting, ensuring higher retention rates, and creating a positive work environment for our employees,” said Matthew Elwell, Director of the San Miguel County Detention Center. “CorrHealth is not only a trustworthy provider, but we know our 150-bed facility is just as important to them as one of their 3,000-bed facilities elsewhere. It’s obvious that CorrHealth is committed to providing our inmates and San Miguel County with the same level of attention, quality care, and services as they provide in larger counties. Their level of attention and support is rare in our industry and we very much appreciate them for that.”

Over their two-year partnership, CorrHealth has worked to ensure that the San Miguel County Detention Center becomes a destination workplace for healthcare professionals and they do so in part, by offering them with robust compensation packages, an industry-leading benefits program, and hands-on training and support, which are standard to the company as they continue to raise the standard of care provided to the county’s inmate population in each of the counties and facilities they serve.

“At CorrHealth, we understand the natural challenges associated with providing care in a rural county like San Miguel’s. We’ve been strategic with our approach; we’ve proactively built a strong support system for our teams which includes locally (New Mexico) based leaders who have years of experience, stand-at-the-ready and can be on-site in San Miguel County in just a few hours,” said Victor Hutchinson, CorrHealth’s Co-Founder and President of Operations. “What we do is important, and we are exceptionally proud of our teams and our work to ensure our patients receive the quality of care which they need and deserve. It’s our goal for former inmates to return back to the community stabilized, healthier than they arrived, and provided with the resources they need to stay healthy and out of the justice system.”

“CorrHealth responded to the unique needs of our county by increasing the number of full-time RNs and increasing healthcare programs that focus on our ever-growing mental health population. They’ve maximized on-site services while minimizing costly and risk-laden offsite transports,” said Elwell. “They are an essential part of our team. We work closely together to keep everyone safe and I’m grateful they’re here.”