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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon

Time: 11:17 pm

Results for medicare care

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Author: Pew Charitable Trusts

Title: State Prisons and the Delivery of Hospital Care: How states set up and finance off-site care for incarcerated individuals

Summary: Delivering adequate medical care to the more than 1 million adults in state prisons is a growing challenge for states, in part because of the high costs and complex logistics required to hospitalize people who are incarcerated. While most care for incarcerated individuals is delivered on-site, some of them periodically need to be hospitalized for acute or specialized care. As is true generally, this treatment is expensive because of the labor-intensive and sophisticated services provided. And hospitalizing someone who is in prison brings added expenses, such as providing secure transportation to and from the hospital and guarding the patient round-the-clock. State officials nationwide are under increasing pressure to contain hospitalization costs while also ensuring the constitutional right to "reasonably adequate" care. Hospitalization expenses are already a significant portion of correctional health care spending and are likely to grow if prison trends continue. The average age of those behind bars is rising, and the health needs of these individuals-like older people outside of prison-are more extensive than those of younger cohorts, including more hospitalizations. State officials are also noting an increase in the amount of care required for all adults entering correctional facilities. Looming over these considerations is the future direction of national health care policy, especially the role of Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income individuals. With these challenges in mind, The Pew Charitable Trusts explored hospital care for people incarcerated in state prisons, tapping data from two nationwide surveys conducted by Pew and the Vera Institute of Justice and from interviews with more than 75 state officials. This first-of-its-kind analysis of hospital care for this patient population is part of a broader examination by Pew of correctional health care in the United States. This report will discuss the ways states arrange and pay for hospital care for their incarcerated population and how such care supplements on-site prison health services. Its findings include: - Off-site care costs are a significant part of correctional health budgets. For example, Virginia spent 27 percent of its prison health care budget on off-site hospital care in 2015, while New York spent 23 percent. - The health care delivery model that state prisons use to provide on-site services informs decisions they must make regarding hospitalization arrangements, including who holds authority to send someone off-site, how the care is coordinated and reviewed, and which entity pays the bill. - The federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) offers state policymakers who elect to expand their Medicaid programs' eligibility a way to reduce inpatient hospital spending. - Though incarcerated individuals always will need to be treated at hospitals for certain conditions or tests, some states have promising practices to avert some off-site care, saving money and mitigating public safety risks. The report's discussion of state approaches to providing care to incarcerated individuals is designed to help the officials involved in setting hospitalization policy-lawmakers, prison and hospital medical staff and administrators, correctional officers, and sometimes private contractors-better manage costs while working toward or maintaining a high-performing prison health care system.

Details: Philadelphia: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2018. 22p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 24, 2018 at: http://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2018/07/prisons-and-hospital-care_report.pdf

Year: 2018

Country: United States

URL: http://www.pewtrusts.org/-/media/assets/2018/07/prisons-and-hospital-care_report.pdf

Shelf Number: 151260

Keywords:
Correctional Health Care
Hospitals
Medicare Care
Prison Health Care
Prison Hospitals