{"id":177162,"date":"2026-03-27T14:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T14:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/177162\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T14:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T14:28:10","slug":"attorney-general-james-bars-correctional-health-care-provider-from-new-york-following-deaths-in-custody","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/177162\/","title":{"rendered":"Attorney General James Bars Correctional Health Care Provider from New York Following Deaths in Custody"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2013 New York Attorney General Letitia James today\u202fannounced a settlement with correctional health care provider\u202fNaphCare,\u202fLLC (NaphCare)<\/a> and its affiliate Proactive Health Care Medicine, PLLC (Proactive), following an investigation into\u202fthree deaths\u202fat the Onondaga County Justice Center\u202f(OCJC)\u202fin Syracuse. The Office of the Attorney General (OAG) found that\u202fNaphCare\u202fillegally practiced medicine in New York and\u202fbroadly\u202fcontrolled\u202fmedical decisions at OCJC despite not being licensed to provide medical services in the state.\u202fAs a result of the investigation,\u202fNaphCare\u00a0must pay $875,000 to the state and is barred from contracting to provide health services in any New York state or local correctional facility for five years.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery New Yorker deserves safe and competent medical care,\u201d said\u202fAttorney General James. \u201cOur investigation found that\u202fNaphCare\u202fillegally practiced medicine in New York and\u202ffailed to\u202fadequately protect individuals in custody who relied on their care. These failures put vulnerable individuals at serious risk and had devastating consequences. Today, we are holding\u202fNaphCare\u202faccountable and ensuring it cannot return to New York without strict oversight.\u201d\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

NaphCare\u00a0is a private, for-profit correctional health care company based in Alabama that provided medical services at OCJC, the Onondaga County Correctional Facility, and the Hillbrook Juvenile Detention Center between 2020 and 2022. The OAG launched an investigation following reports of multiple deaths in custody potentially attributable to inadequate medical care. Through the investigation, OAG determined that\u202fNaphCare\u00a0had\u202fcreated Proactive, a New York corporation, to serve as the nominal medical provider for incarcerated individuals in Onondaga County facilities while\u202fcontinuing to illegally handle decision-making and oversight from Alabama.\u202f\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

When\u00a0entering into\u00a0contracts with correctional facilities,\u00a0NaphCare\u00a0and Proactive claimed that Proactive would provide all clinical care, while\u00a0NaphCare\u00a0would provide only\u00a0administrative and management services. However,\u00a0the OAG found that\u00a0NaphCare\u00a0employees in Alabama regularly issued treatment orders, prescribed medications, and directed care for incarcerated patients\u00a0in New York.\u00a0NaphCare\u00a0also exercised significant control over\u00a0Proactive\u2019s\u00a0operations and supervised its medical staff, effectively running the entire medical practice at the facilities despite not being licensed to practice medicine in New York. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The OAG investigation also uncovered serious failures in care during\u00a0NaphCare\u2019s\u00a0tenure at OCJC. Within a roughly 20-month period, three people in custody died after\u00a0receiving inadequate medical attention. One incarcerated pregnant woman, who was given no prenatal care, repeatedly reported that her water had broken and that she was in labor, but was not evaluated by a medical provider for more than 30 hours and was not transported to a hospital until after she gave birth alone in her cell. Her premature newborn died hours later. Another person died by suicide after not receiving necessary mental health care. A third person, a man in his sixties with a known history of hypertension and other medical conditions, died from cardiovascular disease after receiving only intermittent treatment for dangerously high blood pressure and after multiple medication errors, including mix-ups in ordering and administering his prescriptions.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

The OAG learned that many treatment decisions during these incidents were made remotely through\u202fNaphCare\u2019s\u202felectronic communication system, which allowed providers in Alabama to review electronic records and issue orders without seeing or speaking to patients. Ultimately, OAG\u202fdetermined\u202fthat\u202fNaphCare\u202fengaged in repeated and persistent illegal practices, including widespread violations of New York\u2019s corporate practice of medicine laws, which prohibit non-medical corporations from owning medical practices and from directly employing physicians to provide medical care in the state.\u00a0The\u202fOAG\u202falso found that\u202fNaphCare\u202fviolated numerous state regulations governing medical care in\u202fcorrectional facilities\u202fand repeatedly\u202ffailed to\u202ffollow its own policies and procedures, as well as national standards for correctional health care.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a result of OAG\u2019s investigation,\u202fNaphCare\u202fmust pay $875,000 in penalties and is prohibited from bidding on or\u202fentering into\u202fany contracts with New York state or any New York municipality to provide correctional health services for five years. For an\u202fadditional\u202ffive years after that,\u202fNaphCare\u202fmust provide advance notice to\u202fOAG\u202fand receive written approval before entering into any such contract. If the company is ever\u202fpermitted\u202fto provide correctional health services in New York again, any providers delivering medical, dental, or mental health care to patients in the state, including through telehealth, must be employed by or contracted through a properly licensed New York professional medical entity. If\u202fNaphCare\u202ffails to\u202fuphold any terms of the agreement,\u202fit will face a $50,000 penalty for each violation and may face additional enforcement action.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

This matter was handled by Assistant Attorney General Susan Lambiase under the supervision of Health Care Bureau Chief Darsana Srinivasan.\u202fThe Health Care Bureau is a part of the Division for Social Justice, which is led by Chief Deputy Attorney General Meghan Faux and overseen by First Deputy Attorney General Jennifer Levy.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2013 New York Attorney General Letitia James today\u202fannounced a settlement with correctional health care provider\u202fNaphCare,\u202fLLC (NaphCare)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6856,9,11,10],"class_list":["post-177162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-health-care-insurance","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}