PILL PASS PROBLEMS AT ISCC GETTING CRITICAL - PRISONERS NOT RECEIVING PRESCRIBED MEDS - MEDICAL AND SECURITY STAFF CONTINUE TO BLAME EACH OTHER
As most people know, many prescribed medications are time sensitive, with the need to take the drugs on a regular schedule being critical both to their effectiveness and to prevent under or overdosing. At the ISCC, the time between prisoners receiving their prescribed medications day to day varies up to 6 hours, meaning one might get their evening meds at 5 pm today, and 11 pm tomorrow.
The distribution of medications to prisoners at the ISCC (known as pill call) is, admittedly, extensive. With psychological counseling limited to about 10 minutes per inmate every 3 months or so, psychotropic meds are handed out like Christmas candies in lieu of hiring therapists. Aged prisoners with physical maladies, young men with sprains and strains, post-surgical recovery, and the ever present bacterial and viral infections are all treated with drugs handed out by sour-faced, ill-trained medical contractors while groups of 50 or so prisoners wait in line amongst mounds of garbage for their pills, 3 to 6 hours after they should have been dosed.
According to both unit and medical staff, it is (only) per orders of a specific ISCC shift commander (lieutenant) that the evening dispensation of medication to prisoners, including, but not limited to mental health, neurological (including anti-seizure drugs), antiviral and antibacterials, and in some cases, life saving (even chemotherapy) drugs, is being inordinately delayed, not for security or other legitimate facility reasons, but - according to a nurse who recently resigned over this very issue - because the lieutenant is intentionally making things difficult for medical staff who have complained about how, when and where pill call is being carried out - factors decided by security staff, not medical.
In addition to the problems between the lieutenant and medical staff, WHERE the pill call is being conducted is playing a significant dilatory role in the problems of getting the proper drugs, in proper amounts, to the proper prisoners at a reasonable time.
Hundreds of inmates at the ISCC receive meds up to three times a day. Just prior to the pandemic, someone came up with the ridiculous idea to start doing pill call in the middle of the main (North and West wing) hallways where groups of prisoners, sometimes numbering a hundred or more, waited on pills on their way to or from meals in the chow (dining) hall, blocking the main corridor, as staff threaded their way through on their way to or from their posts. During emergencies in other parts of the facility, north wing staff posted to these areas could not respond, and would attempt to push all the prisoners into the medical department waiting room, and west wing prisoners into the chow hall. That was a dismal failure, and threatened the safety and security of both staff and prisoners alike.
With the pandemic, the closing of the chow hall was the best and most logical thing that ever happened to ISCC (see SATELLITE FEEDING AT THE ISCC - A BETTER WAY TO SECURITY AND SOCIAL DISTANCING on this site). Pill call was moved to tiers in individual housing units and was considerably more effective than any model used in the past. Pill call conducted in the housing units was routinely completed in less than 3 hours for the entire facility, the lines were consistent, water (for taking the pills) was at hand and housing staff were necessarily available.
Recently, pill call was moved back to the corridors. When conducted in the corridors, pill call must be suspended during movement of close custody prisoners, minor disturbances, emergencies and any number of activities which might necessitate movement through the corridor, or cause the guard assigned to supervise the pill call line to be used for other duties (or to simply take a lunch break).
According to medical staff, it is currently taking 5 to 6 hours most every night to complete pill call in the facility. Prisoners are doubling, even tripling their dosages by going through the line multiple times, "cheeking" pills without being noticed, and because many of these meds prevent sleep, some prisoners choose simply to forego their medications when they're delivered unreasonably late.
On the other hand, when pill call is conducted in the housing units, a (regularly posted) unit officer monitors the line of prisoners taking pills. Regular unit staff know most of the prisoners by face/name (preventing impersonations to get another prisoner's meds) and can actually watch the line and observe the taking (or not) of pills. In the units, corridor traffic is not an issue, and (unit) officers are still available to respond to an emergency in another part of the facility if necessary (the nurse simply pulls the pill cart off the tier into the foyer). This is not the case with the single "relief" guard in the hallway.
Security staff have no concern whether or not the medical contractor (Centurion Health) gets sued for failing to provide proper medical treatment, though it will be the Idaho taxpayers who will ultimately pay the price for the lawsuits that are sure to come over the denial of proper medical treatment.