Representatives from Corizon Health Incorporated, the Tennessee-based company that provides health care in Santa Barbara County’s correctional facilities, made the case for a two-year renewal of its contract during a contentious hearing before the Board of Supervisors Sept. 8. The board ultimately agreed to extend the contract 18 months with Corizon, and the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office is splitting the cost of a grievance coordinator.
Corizon Health and Sheriff Bill Brown have been under a microscope since Raymond Herrera, a 52-year-old father from Lompoc, died of a ruptured spleen and cirrhosis of the liver in the early hours of the morning on June 15. He was serving a 10-day sentence for non-violent probation violations.
Supervisors voted later that June to deny a two-year extension of Corizon’s contract, extending it for four months instead and asking them to return at the end of the summer with more information.
On Sept. 8, the supervisors weighed whether to extend the contract for two years—at the cost of $9.8 million dollars—or for a year, at the cost of $4.8 million.
Public comment was packed with representatives of Santa Barbara Families ACT!, who have led the protests around Herrera’s death. Suzanne Riordan, waving a packet of paper, said her printer ran out of paper “halfway through the ream” of a list of complaints against Corizon’s work nationally—of “people being hurt and killed, babies being born in toilets who are then brain damaged for life,” she claimed.
There have been 771 medical grievances filed for the Santa Barbara County jail, including dental and mental health complaints.
James Robertson, identified by Supervisor Carbajal as an ACLU ombudsman who volunteers in the jail, also took the stand. “It’s my opinion that we are not providing adequate health care to the prisoners in the county jail,” he said. Medication and medical procedures have been denied, and care had been delayed, he testified.
Melinda Avila, who identified herself as someone who suffers from schizophrenia, said that she was denied her medication in the jail after an arrest for drinking in public.
“When I don’t have my meds, I feel like I’m being tortured,” she testified.
The supervisors came down hard on the company and the choice between a year or two more years of contracting with the vendor.
“I don’t think that any one of these is a good idea,” Supervisor Adam said at the opening of the hearing. He joined supervisors Farr, Wolf, and Carbajal in navigating correctional health accreditation.
Corizon was accredited through the Institute for Medical Quality through 2007. At this point, they seem to be seeking accreditation through the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NHCCHC).
On the stand, Vice President of Business Development Michael Miller and his staff from Corizon could not tell the supervisors much about either accreditation—saying that they were seeking NCCHC certification in the next six months, then apparently disagreeing with Undersheriff Barney Melekian on whether they had already applied for the certification, and taking heat from supervisors for failing to provide concrete information about either certification.
Supervisor Carbajal came down particularly hard on the company, expressing incredulity at different parts of Corizon’s testimony. “If this is your line of work for your corporation—you’re telling me you have no idea what the rate of certification is?” he asked. “I’m just bewildered by it.”
Undersheriff Melekian pointed out that the certification was a cooperative process between the sheriff and the vendor, and difficult in an aging jail—they were trying to convert a “broom closet” to an exam room, which was difficult to get up to standard.
“We would like to get to the NCCHC standard—we’re just not there,” he testified. “It’s not a failure that we don’t have it; it’s a worthwhile goal to achieve it, if that distinction makes sense.”
This article appears in Sep 10-17, 2015.
