UCICenter to Continue Treating Jail Prisoners Under New 5-Year Pact

Sick or injured jail prisoners will continue to be treated at the UCI Medical Center under a new five-year contract approved by the Orange County Board of Supervisors Tuesday.

County officials simultaneously disclosed, however, that for the first time in 10 years, the jail will not rely on the UCI hospital for all medical care of prisoners. A separate contract is being negotiated to have some prisoner outpatient services, such as emergency room referrals, handled by Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, they said.

Carol Kiser, manager of contract services with the county’s Health Care Agency, said the main contract with UCI Medical Center is estimated at $2.4 million a year, and the proposed contract with Western Medical Center is expected to amount to $200,000 annually.

The new UCI contract allows for an 11% average increase in daily patient-care costs. For many years, the medical center has said the county reimbursements did not cover actual costs and that the contracts have been major factors in the medical center’s rising debt.

Main Teaching Hospital

The center, which is the principal teaching facility of the UC Irvine School of Medicine, is about $10 million in debt for the current fiscal year.

Leon Schwartz, acting director of UCI Medical Center, said Tuesday, however, that he is very satisfied with the new contract for prisoners’ care. “This is an area in which the costs are met, and we don’t lose money,” Schwartz said.

He acknowledged, that the university had some concern about its “image” in continuing to treat inmates. According to some staff members, a few private patients at the medical center have complained about the presence of handcuffed or shackled prisoners in the emergency room or other hospital areas.

Medical center staffers have complained privately that the institution unfairly gets bad publicity because of its responsibility for prisoner care. They cite as an example news stories about the escape of jail prisoner Michael Mohon on Jan. 17, as he was being brought into the hospital for treatment. Mohon, charged with attempting to murder a Fountain Valley police officer, is still at large.

Schwartz confirmed that there was discussion of the center dropping the jail contract.

Image Conflict Feared

“We had this concern about how do we include this kind of patient service with the kind of first-class image we are trying to create,” Schwartz said. He explained that the hospital is trying to attract more privately insured patients.

Schwartz said the university ultimately decided that “this is a significant service we provide for the county, and it’s certainly a service the county needs.”

Kiser, of the county’s Health Care Agency, said both the county and UCI Medical Center are happy that Western Medical Center will supply some services.

Ron DiLuigi, the Health Care Agency’s director of administration, told the supervisors Tuesday that the county is also negotiating a separate contract with UCI Medical Center for the care of the poor. The county’s 10-year indigent-care contract with the center, which had included the prisoner services, expires June 30.

Schwartz has said the medical center’s losses primarily have been due to inadequate county, state and federal reimbursements for the care of poor patients.