Pittsburgh-based Wexford Health Sources, Inc. agreed to pay the settlement to end questions about staffing at the prison.
The Erie County Prison’s medical provider has agreed to pay $125,000 to settle questions about staffing at the jail.
The settlement comes after Erie County Controller Mary Schaaf threatened to file a breach-of-contract lawsuit against the provider, Pittsburgh-based Wexford Health Sources Inc.
At the heart of the dispute was the number of hours that a physician spent at the Erie County Prison each week. Erie County’s contract with Wexford required that a designated physician with the title of medical director work 14 hours per week at the prison. Schaaf charged in a May 1 letter to Wexford that the contractor had been providing only eight hours per week since 2012, when the county first contracted with Wexford.
“Wexford has committed breach of contract and denied the taxpayers of Erie County the benefit of their bargain by being paid for services that were not provided totaling $246,582,” Schaaf wrote in the letter. “Wexford has failed to provide 2,280 hours of physician time through April 2019.”
Schaaf wrote that she would file a complaint against Wexford in court if it did not reimburse the county a total of $348,578, including $101,996 in interest, and fulfill the terms of its contract.
Wexford pushed back against the claims in a series of letters the Erie Times-News obtained through a Right-to-Know request. A lawyer representing Wexford, Andrew DeVooght, responded that Wexford had reached an agreement with prison officials to reduce the number of hours worked by the medical director to eight and increased the number of hours worked by a nurse practitioner or physician’s assistant, according to a May 17 letter.
“This staffing change, at all times geared toward increasing total coverage hours at the facility, continued — with the full and ongoing knowledge and involvement of Erie County Prison leadership — to this day,” DeVooght wrote. “The end result was a significant increase in access to care at the facility.”
Because of the lower hourly rate for nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants, the arrangement saved Wexford $66,700 over seven years, DeVooght wrote.
In another letter, Wexford claimed the staffing change resulted in roughly 2,000 additional hours of services beyond what the contract required. Wexford ultimately admitted no wrongdoing in reaching the $125,000 settlement, which was finalized in early August.
Questions about the number of physician hours Wexford provides at the prison were first raised publicly in a federal lawsuit filed by Erie lawyer John Mizner after an inmate at the prison, April Corritore, died of an infection in October.
Schaaf’s office began looking into the issue after the Erie Times-News asked about the claims raised in the lawsuit.
Corritore’s sister sued Wexford, Medical Associates of Erie and two medical staffers, including the former medical director at the prison. The complaint claims that Wexford contracted with Medical Associates of Erie, a LECOM Health physician network, to provide a medical director’s presence at the prison for eight hours per week — not the 14 hours required in Wexford’s contract with Erie County.
“The result ... is that inmates are denied access to a medical doctor six hours a week,” Mizner wrote in the complaint. The suit alleges that medical providers were deliberately indifferent to Corritore’s worsening condition before her death.
Wexford has asked a judge to dismiss the federal lawsuit. A decision is pending.
Mizner said in an interview that he discovered the staffing discrepancy in the course of another lawsuit. He said the issue is relevant to the lawsuit over Corritore’s death.
“I think it’s reasonable to ask how the care would have been different if Wexford had a doctor there 14 hours a week rather than eight,” Mizner said. “The men and women who are housed in the Erie County Prison have a constitutional right to adequate medical care.”
Schaaf said her office looked into the claims by sorting through biometric log-in data to determine the number of hours medical staff have been working at the prison. She did not assess the quality of care Wexford has provided at the prison, she said.
“As the controller, I’m here to see that we got our money’s worth that we had contracted for,” Schaaf said. She said her primary concern was that Wexford did not provide the hours of care required in its contract with Erie County, and that the company submitted a proposal for its 2015 contract without amending the hours requirement.
“When you bid on a contract or request for proposals, you must abide by those terms,” she said.
Wexford has since contracted with a new medical director at the prison and has assured Schaaf that the physician will work 14 hours per week, she said.
In an email Tuesday, Erie County Director of Administration Gary Lee said the agreement with Wexford, which was reached under the previous Erie County Prison warden, had provided more hours of care from medical professionals. The arrangement was extended when Wexford was awarded the contract again in 2015, he said.
“It was a verbal agreement to make changes that benefited the jail. However, the new agreement should have been obtained in a written form,” Lee said. “In the future, the county administration will request all contractual changes be obtained in writing from the contractor.”
Erie County recently put out a request for proposals for a medical care provider at the Erie County Prison. Wexford is one of three providers that submitted proposals.
Original Article by: Madeleine O’Neill can be reached at 870-1728 or by email. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ETNoneill.