GLASGOW —
County officials are considering a new medical provider for inmates at the Barren County Correction Center as a way to save county money.
Barren County currently pays $144,000 per year for a company to provide a nurse eight hours a day Monday through Friday and for four hours on Saturday and Sunday. The contract is for an average of 120 inmates.
Michael Coffey, from Advanced Correctional Healthcare, has presented the county with a bid of $136,596.88 for the same number of inmates and hours of nursing.
The company will have to present another bid, because the jail is now averaging around 130 inmates daily instead of 120, Mutter said. They will present options for the current number of hours and more hours because of the growing number of inmates.
The company can also offer all the county agencies significant savings on office supply costs through its bulk buying contracts, Coffey said. The company works with multiple other counties allowing them to negotiate discounted rates for supplies.
“This program saves some counties as much as $40,000 per year,” Coffey said.
The goal is before any county agency makes a purchase of any size, it needs to look at an Advanced catalog to see if the items can be purchased for a discount, he said. In most cases, the discount is between 10 and 25 percent, he said.
There will be a need for a nurse to be at the jail more hours once the new facility opens. It’s being built with 178 beds, Mutter said.
Another goal for adding more hours with a nurse is to keep deputy jailers as much as possible from having to distribute medications, he said. Currently the nurse at the jail distributes the first dose of the day, but is not at the facility long enough to distribute the second dose. Therefore the task falls to deputy jailers. There are several inmates who are diabetic and have to receive insulin shots before they go to bed.
“One of the problems with the new company has been the quality of the nurses,” Mutter said. “The jail has already went through two or three nurses recently.”
Coffey said his company avoids that by paying nurses at a rate that is slightly ahead of what T.J. Samson Community Hospital pays nurses. Higher pay tends to attract a higher quality of nurse.
In addition, if Mutter finds a nurse he likes with the current company, Advanced will try to hire them, Coffey said.
Mutter said the jail is considering all methods possible to save money and this new medical provider could result in savings for the county.
The jail committee will get other bids from Coffey before making any recommendation to Barren Fiscal Court.
The members of the jail committee stated that Mutter would have to make the final decision on which company to use.
Although, Magistrate Carlie Coe Jr. said he thinks the county should try to continue with the existing number of nursing hours to save money.
“I think we can continue to slide by until we get into the new facility,” Mutter said.
Local News
Related Photos
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Christina Walbert, LPN, checks medications in the nurse’s office at the Barren County Correction Center on Friday morning. Walbert is the medical team administrator and an employee of Southern Health Partners. Lisa Simpson Strange
Discussion
Search on for medical savings
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