Washington County, TX – CorrHealth is excited to announce their new partnership with and successful transition into Washington County, providing comprehensive inmate medical, mental, and ancillary healthcare programs and services to the inmates incarcerated in the County’s 177-bed (ADP of 85) facility. In addition to a comprehensive RFP process, Washington County’s Commissioners and Judge underwent a thorough analysis which consisted of educating themselves regarding privatization of jail medical services, meeting and consulting with various Texas county officials, as well as touring other facilities across the state to ensure they were successful in choosing their next correctional healthcare provider. As of June 25th, the Washington County Commissioner’s Court executed a contract with CorrHealth, with the expectation that CorrHealth would execute an emergency transition to start beginning Monday, June 28th.
Over the last several years, Washington County has privately employed three different Medical Directors to manage and provide oversight for jail medical services. Officials recognized that they were experiencing several inefficiencies that they needed to address which led them to their decision to hire a new healthcare provider. The issues they wanted to address were a reduction in the difficulties in today’s market associated with the recruitment and retainment of qualified medical and mental healthcare professionals, elevating the standard of care which included additional training and support for correctional-based medical and mental healthcare teams, and mitigate the county’s risk and liability exposure and decrease and stabilize the county’s overall costs by maximizing onsite services and reducing costly offsite transports, providing dental, Xray and laboratory services onsite.
“Through our extensive process, we discovered that there was a better way of ensuring the care that we provide at the Washington County Jail. After a competitive procurement process, we decided to contract with CorrHealth who had considerable experience implementing and supporting the programs and services we needed and could do so quickly for us.” said Washington County Commissioner, Candace Bullock. “Upon the committee awarding the contract to CorrHealth, they were onsite immediately and prior to the transition to provide training, to review our policies and procedures, and transitioned in one week which included the implementation of a correctional-based medical records program. We couldn’t be more pleased with our decision.”
CorrHealth understood the needs of the Washington County community, therefore, a strong, stable coverage matrix based on providing onsite licensed medical and mental healthcare around the clock, every day of the week, was key to a successful plan. In addition, with the challenges regarding recruitment and retainment that exist in the hiring market today, CorrHealth executed a plan to provide more flexibility to support the program in addition to providing layers of liability coverage which includes six liability policies. An implementation of onsite ancillary services to include dental, xray, and laboratory services as well as CorrEMR (CorrHealth’s Correctional-based medical records program) was also put in place within the first week.
“Corrhealth chose to pursue a partnership with Washington County because because their leadership was in complete alignment about their needs for raising the standard of care in the Washington County Jail and they understood the risk and liability associated with
costly offsite transports,” said Todd Murphy, CorrHealth President. “Their commitment and dedication to their county was evident through the lengthy analysis and research that they conducted to ensure that Washington County received the programs and services they needed and deserved and we are honored to have been chosen as their provider. It is a perfect partnership and we will strive to ensure that the programs and services we provide them is unmatched in the industry.”
