Inmates file suit against former provider.
Over the last year, whistle-blowers have come forward, auditors have released findings, legislative committees have convened. All concluded that Wexford Health Sources Inc., the private company that secured an exclusive contract in 2004 to provide health care to New Mexico inmates, cut corners at the cost of prisoners' well being. ***image1***
Last year, SFR published an award-winning 15-part series focusing on health care professionals' allegations about the care in the prisons [
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Although Wexford's contract expired on June 30, 2007, inmates are now filing handwritten civil suits leveled at Wexford, the State of New Mexico and its private-prison contractor, the GEO Group.
Richard Vespender, an inmate in GEO Group's Lea County Correctional Facility, filed suit in the First Judicial District on July 3, 2007, alleging that Wexford denied him treatment for a back injury he suffered in 2001 when he slipped on a wet floor at another prison facility. Vespender, who is representing himself, says doctors had identified two herniated discs in his lower back that required surgery, but Wexford would only pay for temporary pain-killers.
On Aug, 15, former Western New Mexico Correctional Facility inmate Johnny Gallegos filed suit claiming that, in the summer of 2005, Wexford employees ignored his serious urinary condition. The suit alleges that Gallegos was treated for constipation, despite regular bowel movements and, after more than a week of complaints, was finally taken to the hospital after the prison's warden discovered him waiting in line at the medical clinic with his shorts covered in blood.
While the plaintiffs have yet to respond to Gallegos' complaint, GEO Group and the New Mexico Department of Corrections have denied culpability in Vespender's case, and claim, in their legal response, that they are "without sufficient knowledge or information" to either admit or deny 32 of Vespender's allegations. Most conspicuously, the plaintiffs claim they don't know enough about Vespender's 2006 visits to Dr. Don Apodaca, who at the time was Wexford's medical director at the Lea County prison. Apodaca resigned in November 2006 and previously told SFR: "It came to the point where I felt uncomfortable with the medical and legal position I was in. There were individuals who needed health care who weren't getting it."
Although NMDOC and GEO now deny sufficient knowledge of both Apodaca's diagnosis and that of the specialists at an Albuquerque health clinic, both were cited in an April 4, 2007 memo from NMDOC denying Vespender's final administrative appeal, which was included in Vespender's case file.
Tia Bland, spokesperson for NMDOC, says this is a moot point: As of July 1, St. Louis, Mo.-based Correctional Medical Services began handling prison health care.
"If there are inmates who felt that they were not receiving proper treatment when Wexford was there, there is a process for them to let us know about that, for them to let the current vendor know about that and we certainly will address whatever their concern is now," she says.
Solomon Brown, Gallegos' attorney, says he's interviewed dozens of upset New Mexico inmates, and a new vendor may not be enough.
"In my estimations, there's nothing but dissatisfaction among the inmates," Brown says. "The governor needs to appoint a group to formally look at it, or an ombudsman to go and talk to these inmates like I do and meet with them."
Santa Fe Reporter