The latest evaluation of the San Quentin State Prison health care system shows that urgent and emergency services for prisoners are deficient. High marks were given to the health care system for doing face-to-face assessments of treatment plans and appropriately housing prisoners based on their ailments.
Urgent services address the care provided to prisoners before and after they were sent to an outside hospital. Emergency services examine medical personnel response time to prisoner injuries.
In 2001, California prisoners filed a class action lawsuit alleging that the state provided constitutionally inadequate medical care in its prisons.
In 2005, a federal judge ruled that the prison system’s delivery for medical care to prisoners was “broken beyond repair.” He appointed a receiver to raise the delivery of medical care to constitutional standards.
The receiver requested, and the Office of the Inspector General agreed, to establish an inspection program to review the delivery of medical care at each state prison.
In March 2011, San Quentin was inspected for the second time. The report found that San Quentin received 81.5 percent of the total weighted points possible – a 13.3 percentage point improvement over the score of 68.2 percent from its first inspection in December 2009.
The low score in urgent services was based on its inability to manage follow-up treatment prescribed for prisoners after being discharged from outside hospitals. The low scores in emergency services was primarily because of inadequate preparation and improper equipment available to emergency responders; however, submitting paperwork late significantly dragged this mark down.
San Quentin staff was given good marks for timely dialing 911 after a life-threatening condition was identified, and all first responders were basic life-support certified.
A complete breakdown of the institution’s score in each of the 19 relevant components of the evaluation, including the results of all 132 questions on the survey, can be found at www.org.ca.gov.