Learn about the essential provision of medical, dental, and mental health services within correctional facilities, including best practices and standards.
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- The need for effective and efficient correctional health care services has risen with increasing incarceration rates, including mental health, substance abuse, suicide prevention, and elderly care. This page has resources on correctional health care best practices.
Indeed, it's not just prisoners being treated for mental illness who feel a stigma—it's also their providers. "A lot of practices don't want our prisoners," Penn said. "They're worried about the danger." Having providers come to the patients, in prison, poses its own problems.
- Since its beginning, Community Oriented Correctional Health Services (COCHS) has worked to bridge the gap between correctional and community providers. COCHS' major emphasis has been to re-frame jail health care not as a place separate from the rest of the community, but as another health care delivery site within the community.
- The National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) establishes standards for health services in correctional facilities, operates a voluntary accreditation program for institutions that meet those standards, produces resource publications, conducts educational conferences and offers certification for correctional health professionals
Most people leaving prison have at least one chronic problem with physical health, mental health, or substance use (Mallik-Kane and Visher 2008).
Mass incarceration disproportionately impacts lower-income communities, communities of color, and persons with disabilities, creating a barrier to achieving health equity.
In an effort to better understand the role of pharmaceuticals in the state correctional setting and budget, and in a state’s overall health care strategy, The Pew Charitable Trusts, in partnership with the Vera Institute of Justice, administered a survey in 2016 to each state’s department of corr
- During 2015, the latest year for which data are available, there were 10.9 million admissions to these correctional facilities, which hold individuals who are awaiting trial or serving short sentences.
While some level of in-custody deaths are inevitable - for example, the passing of elderly inmates from old age - certain types of mortality are highly preventable with the proper interventions.
Patient safety systems use redundancy (double checking) procedures to minimize errors and prevent adverse and near-miss clinical events. However, redundancy and back-up procedures alone do not guarantee that patient morbidity and mortality will be reduced.
This article explains how the use of telehealth - the interactive electronic exchange of information for diagnosis, treatment, support, or care management - can be a useful component for grantees of the Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Abuse Program (COSSAP), which focuses on a coll
Approximately 6% to 10% of incarcerated women are pregnant on any given day, and it is estimated that as many as 1,400 women per year give birth while in custody. Pregnant women have unique health care and psychosocial needs.