A Sun-Times investigation<\/a> into the current healthcare conditions within state prisons found that the state\u2019s critically understaffed facilities struggle to deliver proper correctional medicine to the tens of thousands of incarcerated people in their care.<\/p>\nCharles King is incarcerated at Sheridan Correctional Center. He said he\u2019s been waiting months for a prostate cancer screening after he received concerning results in January.<\/p>\n
UI Health conducted a blood test for King to detect early signs of prostate cancer. King\u2019s results were off the charts, according to testing documents he shared with Prisoncast! and the Sun-Times.<\/p>\n
\u201cIDOC is delaying and purposely denying me a needed urology prostate cancer screening,\u201d King, 62, wrote in a grievance in April \u2014 a copy of which he sent to Prisoncast! and the Sun-Times. \u201cMedical personnel … need to take serious the fact that older men are humans whose lives are not to be finalized because they willfully choose not to give them medical treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n
King, incarcerated for over 20 years, said he has yet to receive a referral to a urologist for further testing.<\/p>\n
IDOC declined to comment on King\u2019s and Kirkpatrick\u2019s allegations of medical neglect, citing healthcare privacy laws.<\/p>\n
\u2018A large corporation is screwing us\u2019<\/p>\n
The sudden shift to Centurion also affected subcontractors delivering care to incarcerated people.<\/p>\n
Marc O\u2019Neal is a physical therapist based in Will County who owns and operates Brightmore Physical Therapy. His company contracted with IDOC early last year to provide physical therapy to men housed at the Joliet Treatment Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cI liked working with that community. It doesn\u2019t bother me. I enjoyed helping them,\u201d O\u2019Neal said.<\/p>\n
But when IDOC ended its deal with Wexford, his 25 patients stopped coming, and Wexford has yet to pay him an outstanding $11,000 bill for services provided before IDOC canceled Wexford\u2019s contract.<\/p>\n
Wexford representatives told O\u2019Neal they won\u2019t pay him until Illinois pays Wexford, but they wouldn\u2019t elaborate on what amount the state owes Wexford and why.<\/p>\n
Wexford did not respond to requests for comment on O\u2019Neal\u2019s outstanding bill. IDOC declined to comment. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat is not a huge amount of money for them. They could easily cut that check,\u201d O\u2019Neal said. \u201cWe are a local, family-owned small business, and a large corporation is screwing us. And they\u2019re blaming it on the state and holding us hostage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vollen-Katz said lawmakers should do more to ensure better healthcare in Illinois prisons and demand an accounting of how IDOC and its contractors spend taxpayer dollars.<\/p>\n
Gov. JB Pritzker\u2019s office, Wexford and Centurion did not respond to requests to comment. And despite some lawmakers saying in December<\/a> they would support legislation to improve prison healthcare, no meaningful proposals have advanced in Springfield.<\/p>\n\u201cLawmakers are in a great position to access information that\u2019s harder or impossible for the public to see,\u201d Vollen-Katz said. \u201cThey can also ask the agency, \u2018What is all this money doing? Where is it going? Is it having the impact the agency says it will when they are asking for all this money?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Natalie Kirkpatrick believes the Illinois prison system is deliberately neglecting her son. Connor Kirkpatrick is incarcerated at downstate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-749992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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