Calif. prison system settles class action suit over care

Prisoners find lawsuits an effective way to change the health care they receive.

By Tanya Albert, AMNews staff. March 4, 2002.

Although California has been criticized recently for providing a prisoner with a new heart, other inmates have complained that they haven't been getting the health care they need.

That's about to change, as the corrections department gets ready to step up the amount of time physicians and nurses spend with inmates. Each prisoner will be assigned a primary care physician, and nurses will staff prisons 24 hours a day.

The changes are part of a settlement of a class action lawsuit. A prisoners rights advocacy group last year sued the California Dept. of Corrections -- which houses more than 156,000 inmates -- accusing the system of denying prisoners adequate medical care, subjecting them to "cruel and unusual punishment."

One prisoner with AIDS said he didn't get his pain medication on a regular basis. Another inmate said treatment for a knee injury was delayed, and once he received the surgery, he didn't get the follow-up care he needed. A third man, a paraplegic, said his catheter was changed so infrequently that he had to be hospitalized because of infections.

The agreement lays out plans to have more nurses and doctors and to provide better on-site facilities. Prison Law Office Director Don Specter said. The California nonprofit filed the case against the Dept. of Corrections.

"It should provide timely access to care," Specter said of the agreement. "And it ensures that the Dept. of Corrections will meet the community's standard of care."

How "standard of care" should be defined has been playing out through the court system for 25 years, since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that delaying or denying medical care violated the 8th Amendment. [...]