Countywide : Hire Jail Pharmacist, Grand Jury Reiterates

Despite the Orange County Grand Jury recommendation made a year ago, the Board of Supervisors still has not hired a licensed pharmacist to dispense medication at the Orange County Jail, the county grand jury said in a report handed down Friday.

The jurors said that allowing a nurse to fill prescriptions and a sheriff to hand out medication to jail inmates is a possible violation of state law. The grand jury urged the supervisors to hire a pharmacist, as called for by the 1984-85 grand jury in a report 11 months ago.

Robert Love, the acting director of the Health Care Agency, which runs medical facilities in the jail, said he is waiting for a report from two pharmacists who have been studying the jail for the past month.

Love noted that Bonnie Norman, former head of jail medical services for Los Angeles County, studied jail health care and concluded in March that there were “no critical deficiencies in inmate health care.”

Love also said he hopes to obtain funds in next year’s budget to end the practice of having deputy sheriffs dispense medication. And he added that he did not believe the lack of a pharmacist at the jail was a violation of state law.

The grand jury also repeated its recommendation of last March that the responsibility for medical services in the jail be transferred from the Health Care Agency to the Sheriff’s Department.

Supervisors have resisted handing over responsibility for medical care to the Sheriff’s Department because of perceptions of a conflict of interest.

The Health Care Agency clashed several times last year with law enforcement officials over protecting the confidentiality of inmates’ medical and psychiatric records.

In one case last year, sheriff’s officials ordered mental health workers out of the jail after they refused to turn over the psychiatric records of an inmate who had apparently committed suicide in the jail to Brad Gates, who is both sheriff and coroner.

Gates eventually won a court order and obtained the records, but the case sparked several inquiries into possible conflicts of interest in joint operation of the sheriff and coroner offices.

Last week the supervisors voted to retain the consolidated Sheriff-Coroner’s Department, but to have the district attorney act as coroner in deaths in the jail or of people in the custody of sheriff’s deputies.