PRISONER MEDICAL COSTS CONTROLLABLE

With Cape Girardeau County spending nearly $109,000 last year on medical services and prescription drugs for prisoners, the county has prudently hired a nurse to provide on-site health care and to help decide who gets medical treatment outside the jail and who doesn't.

This was a good decision.

The new county jail scheduled to open in March should also help keep costs down, because the county won't have to board prisoners in other county jails and therefore can exercise more control over medical treatment of its own prisoners.

The $109,000 included everything from prescription drugs to ambulance charges to visits to the two hospitals in Cape Girardeau.

Medical bills for prisoners housed in the Cape Girardeau County jail at Jackson totaled $52,974 in 2000. The rest came from the county's prisoners held in other county jails because there wasn't space in the Cape Girardeau County jail. Primarily, the Cape Girardeau County prisoners were lodged in Mississippi County jail at Charleston, where Cape Girardeau County incurred $51,528 in prisoner medical expenses last year.

The new jail will accommodate as many as 140 prisoners, which means the county shouldn't have to put prisoners in other regional jails. That too will save the county money. Since other counties aren't paying for Cape Girardeau County prisoners' medical costs, those counties are likely to allow prisoners more frequent visits to doctors or a hospital, and the practice has proved costly.

Sheriff John Jordan said medical costs last year averaged $1,089 for prisoners jailed outside the county, but $756 a prisoner for those housed in the Cape Girardeau County Jail.

County officials are aware that many prisoners complain of medical problems simply to get some time out of jail, and those are the kinds of visits the county can eliminate.

The new nurse raised a good point in suggesting that it might be cheaper for a doctor to see prisoners in the new jail rather than taking those prisoners to a doctor's office or the hospital.

County officials are on the right track by making prisoners pay a portion of their medical and prescription drug costs, something they were not required to do until about six years ago. And more savings can be expected with the new jail.