Budget limits, rising costs for inmate healthcare put county in bind

LACONIA — With medical expenses for the Belknap County Corrections facility continuing to outpace what has been budgeted at a troubling rate, the county is moving ever closer to outsourcing healthcare services for inmates as a way of reducing costs.

Corrections Superintendent Adam Cunningham told the County Board of Commissioners Thursday that he calculates that the department will spend $679,866 this year for medical care. While that figure is $71,135 less than what medical costs amounted to last year, it is over $35,000 more than what the department is allowed to spend under the current budget.

Cunningham told the commissioners that the upcoming leave for one of the department’s nurses will result in an additional unanticipated expense of between $18,099 and $36,197.

Last month Cunningham proposed the county turn over the medical care responsibilities to PrimeCare Medical, a private firm which provides correctional healthcare to county jails, prisons, and juvenile detention centers.

Cunningham said it has become increasingly challenging cost wise for the corrections facility to operate healthcare services with its own doctors and nurses. He said the physicians who currently work at the facility had just been hit with a 1,500 percent increase in their malpractice insurance premiums and that an increase of that magnitude was typical.

In addition, the cost to hire contracted nurses to cover whenever a regular staff nurse becomes ill, or needs to go on leave, is becoming increasingly expensive, particularly in light of the shortage of nurses.

Cunningham told the commissions that by hiring an outside firm the county would be able to better control costs. If the department were to switch to a private provider effective June 1, he projected that the total healthcare costs for this year will be $722,898.

While that exceeds the current budget allocation by more than $78,000, Cunningham has told the commissioners there would be far fewer unanticipated expenses for medical care.

“We’ve obviously got a problem and I don’t see a solution,” County Commissioner Hunter Taylor said.

“One solution is to outsource the medical services,” Commissioner Glen Waring remarked.

“We have a pretty good-sized bag of money coming (from the latest federal COVID relief bill) and we will see you don’t come up short,” Commission Chairman Peter Spanos told Cunningham.