Allegheny County cutting ties with Corizon Health after deaths of 2 inmates at county jail
The unexplained deaths this week of two more inmates in the Allegheny County Jail are not the only reason County Executive Rich Fitzgerald says a decision was made to cut ties with Corizon Health Inc., a nationally known but controversial provider of health care services at the lockup.
“We were probably moving in that direction but weren't ready to make that decision,” Fitzgerald said at a news conference Friday announcing that Corizon's services at the jail will end in August. “Corizon has not met our expectations.”
Two inmates died Thursday, the third and fourth prisoners to die while incarcerated there this year. Autopsies on all four were inconclusive and further tests are being conducted, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office said.
Those deaths and six others last year have prompted complaints and concerns that inmates don't always receive the care they need.
“I know they fired them, but it ain't going to bring my kid back,” said Shelley Leininger, mother of inmate Timothy Leininger, 27, who died at 3:47 p.m. Thursday in the intensive care unit at UPMC Mercy. “I am so messed up. I am beside myself. Oh God! He was my only child.”
She does not know why her son, who she said had physical and mental problems and required daily medication, died. She hopes to get some answers soon.
“Corizon Health leadership and Allegheny County leadership have mutually agreed not to extend our contract for health care services at the Allegheny County Jail past Aug. 31, 2015,” Corizon officials said in a prepared statement issued after Fitzgerald's announcement.
Fitzgerald said a consortium of local medical providers, educational institutions — “a partnership of our meds and eds,” he said — and others is being organized to provide health care services in the jail beginning Sept. 1.
“We pretty much got it in place,” Fitzgerald said. “More details will be announced in the next week or two.”
Tennessee-based Corizon, he said, “promised full cooperation for a smooth transition.”
Fitzgerald said the partnership will be under the direction of County Manager William D. McKain and Jail Warden Orlando Harper.
Corizon has been under fire almost from the time it signed a five-year contract to take over health care in the jail beginning in September 2013.
County Controller Chelsa Wagner, who could not be reached for comment Friday, released a scathing audit in December 2014, saying the company “ripped off” taxpayers and put the health of inmates and employees at risk by failing to comply with the terms of the $12 million-a-year contract.
Harper and Corizon disputed what they termed Wagner's “unfair” claims of unsafe staffing levels, poor clinical and mental health care, unfair labor practices and inmates released without plans for follow-up care.
“There has been a lot of public outcry prior to the making of this announcement,” Fitzgerald acknowledged Friday. “We've been working on this for a number of months. This is something that was building. It just wasn't meeting the expectations. I don't know that I can point to one specific (problem).”
Leininger, who was arrested Jan. 9 on charges of making terroristic threats to a worker at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, was found “unresponsive and in cardiac arrest on the floor” in a medical unit of the jail on Wednesday, his mother said.
He was placed on life support in UPMC Mercy, where she said she asked physicians to pull the plug when they told her that he had “very, very bad brain damage” with no hope of recovery.
“He had a tumor removed last year, and he had to take daily steroids and water pills. If he didn't get them, the doctors told me, it would make him deathly sick or even kill him. I'm not saying they weren't giving him his pills. I don't know,” Leininger said from her home in Ross.
Monty Crawford Jr., 23, who was charged in December 2013 with raping a child and related charges, was found dead on the floor of the jail at 8:20 p.m. Thursday, the medical examiner's office said.
Timothy Melvin Haskell, 49, of West View died April 10 in the jail infirmary, and Frank Smart, 39, of the Hill District died in UPMC Mercy on Jan. 5, two hours after his family says he was found having suffered a seizure in the jail. The family contends that nurses at the jail did not give him his medication for his seizure disorder.
County councilman Jim Ellenbogen and other council members applauded the decision to sever ties with Corizon.
“It was time for them to go,” Ellenbogen said.
Staff writer Megan Guza contributed to this report.
