PENDER COUNTY — A new firm has been hired to provide medical care for Pender County Jail inmates after the brief tenure of a company the county tapped to serve the jail in December.
READ MORE: Healthcare provider for Pender County Jail bows out, commissioners to vote on new firm
The commissioners unanimously approved a contract with Mediko transferring care responsibilities from Inmate Medical Services. The measure will continue care at the jail until the county puts a full year’s contract out to bid in December. Mediko is based in Richmond, Virginia.
Mediko will operate at the same rate as the previous provider, paid out of a budgeted $467,749 the county approved for the jail’s medical expenses this fiscal year. Mediko will provide care primarily through a team of licensed practical nurses, though the jail will also have access to a nurse practitioner who defers to a medical doctor.
The service staff on site provide assessments and routine care for inmates like administering medication and diagnosing illness. They also handle emergencies and refer inmates for extensive treatment when necessary.
Sheriff Alan Cutler spoke to the board of commissioners during its Monday meeting, stating IMS was not able to fulfill its obligations in the December contract. He told the commissioners IMS was supposed to provide 16 hours of service Monday through Friday, and 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday, but Cutler said the firm only delivered half the hours on weekdays.
In late June the IMS staff sent his office a message stating the company would voluntarily bow out of its contract. Cutler’s office then reached out to Mediko, one of the five firms to have submitted contract proposals to the county last year. The firm submitted a proposal on July 7 and will start as the provider Saturday, Aug. 26.
The contract states the services will run through June 30, 2024, with either party able to end the agreement with 90-days notice. Cutler noted the company is aware the county intends to put out the contract for bid in December.
Cutler said Mediko will be able to provide the correct number of hours during every day of the week and the company was made aware the contract will go out to bid next year.
“Didn’t this happen last year?” Commissioners Chair Jackie Newton asked Cutler during the meeting.
Cutler said the circumstances are the same as those that led to the county parting ways with Wellpath, which provided the service from 2016 to 2022. No one from the office answered Port City Daily’s questions about why the contract was terminated at the time, but on Monday Cutler attributed the trouble keeping a provider to “staffing issues in that line of work.”
Wellpath sought, and received, annual pay increases in its contracts specifically to address staffing shortages. The termination letter it sent to the county last year stated its staffing costs had increased “at rates many times the [consumer price index]” for its services. IMS sought no increase in compensation when it took over as the provider.
Newton said she is sorry Cutler’s office is having problems landing a permanent provider and called the shake-ups “disruptive.”
Port City Daily first reported the expected hiring of IMS last October. At the time, the sheriff’s office pointed to IMS’s qualification as a provider rather than a management company, that IMS was the least-expensive proposal, and the company received positive recommendations from other facilities.
The sheriff’s office experienced shortened hours as Wellpath was on its way out as well. The company agreed to extend its contract, which it intended to expire in October after a 60-day notice, at the request of the county as the search was finalized. Wellpath cut its hours at the jail from 104 to 56 during the extension period until IMS stepped in.
The county is still working on a new jail facility, which has run into timeline and cost problems, but the project took a major step forward in May when a new piece of legislation cleared up a barrier to financing it through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The county currently transports more than 1,000 inmates to out-of-county facilities each year due to a lack of space in its current 92-bed facility.
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