Santa Clara Doctors Oppose Plan to Contract Out Care for Mentally Ill Inmates

News provided by

Union of American Physicians and Dentists

Sep 18, 2015, 07:39 ET

SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 18, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The alleged murder of Michael Tyree by guards in the Santa Clara County Main Jail made clear how vulnerable mentally ill inmates are, and that communities must do more to ensure their proper care. However, Santa Clara County executives are poised to take a huge step in the opposite direction by replacing the County psychiatrists who care for inmates at the Main Jail, Elmwood Correctional Facility and Elmwood Correctional Center for Women with contract workers. The County Board of Supervisors are expected to vote on a contract with Traditions Behavioral Health (TBH), which can be viewed at bit.ly/2015tbh, at a meeting later this month. If the contract is approved, the result will be lower quality care provided at astronomical prices by psychiatrists lured by the promise of enormous salaries -- the opposite of what the inmates and community need.

Plan Undermines Care of Mentally Ill Inmates

A contracting agency like TBH is staffed by doctors who oftentimes stay for just a few months before moving on to another assignment. By the time they are fully oriented to a system, they are gone. They have no commitment to our community, less public oversight, and little accountability. Replacing experienced, long-term County doctors with a series of contractors will make it far more difficult to provide inmates with the kind of mental health care they need and deserve.

Waste of Taxpayer Money

Under the agreement, Santa Clara will pay TBH an astounding $258 per hour for psychiatrist services. By contrast, the highest paid County psychiatrists earn a base pay of $102 per hour. Even with the cost of benefits are added in, County doctors cost less than half as much as the outside contractors do. "They want to pay twice as much for something half as good as what they already have," said Dr. Stuart A. Bussey, President of UAPD, the union that represents the County psychiatrists.

Staffing shortages have plagued the Custody Mental Health Department in recent years. This is due to the County's failure to pay a wage equal to that paid for the same work in neighboring counties. If the salaries of the psychiatrists in Custody Mental Health were made commensurate with those of neighboring counties, this so-called crisis would be averted without resorting to the far more expensive contractors. It's a simple matter of properly allocating resources to the care of this most vulnerable group of patients.

Santa Clara County doctors have begun reaching out to the County Board of Supervisors to express their opposition to the contracting-out plan.

SOURCE Union of American Physicians and Dentists