NPR Newsflash! BOP Healthcare Driven by ‘Delay and Ignore’ – Update for September 25, 2023 | Legal Information Services Associates LLC

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NPR BLASTS SUBSTANDARD BOP HEALTHCARE

In a revelation that will not shock a single prisoner in Bureau of Prisons custody, NPR reported last Saturday that the BOP has been misrepresenting the accreditation of its healthcare facilities while compiling a record of ignoring or delaying medical treatment – especially in cancer care – leading to needless inmate disability and death.

NPR said it had obtained hundreds of BOP records that showed, among other things, that over 25% of the almost 5,000 inmates who died in federal custody from 2009 to 2020 died in a single place: FCC Butner. According to NPR’s analysis, more BOP prisoners died of cancer than any other cause from 2009 to 2020.

NPR admits that more deaths at Butner are to be expected, given the complex includes FMC Butner, the system’s largest cancer treatment facility. However, NPR reported, it found

numerous accounts of inmates nationwide going without needed medical care. More than a dozen waited months or even years for treatment, including inmates with obviously concerning symptoms: unexplained bleeding, a suspicious lump, intense pain. Many suffered serious consequences. Some… did not survive. Too often, sources told NPR, federal prisons fail to treat serious illnesses fast enough. When an ailment like cancer is caught, the BOP often funnels these sick inmates to a place like Butner, where it is assumed they’ll receive more specialized treatment. But by the time prisoners access more advanced care, it’s sometimes too late to do much more than palliative care. What’s more, current and former inmates and staff at Butner told NPR the prison has issues of its own, including delays in care and staffing shortages.”

The NPR report caught the BOP in a falsehood. The agency says on its website that “Federal Medical Centers (FMCs) are accredited by the Joint Commission,” the nation’s leading healthcare accreditation agency. But NPR said that was untrue, that in fact, the BOP’s certification lapsed two years ago. When confronted, a BOP spokesperson said that regardless of the lapsed accreditation, the agency adheres to Joint Commission standards.

You know: “Our kitchen may not have been inspected by the health department, but we assure you it’s clean…”

Sources NPR interviewed say federal inmates — “a group with a constitutional right to health care yet without the autonomy to access it on their own,” NPR said — are dying more often than they should. “Deaths in custody should be rare events, given that this is such a controlled environment,” says Michele Deitch, director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Prison and Jail Innovation Lab. “Are there preventable deaths happening in the BOP? The answer to that is clearly yes.”

NPR quoted an anonymous BOP medical staff member at Butner who said she has heard stories like theirs “so many times… So many inmates have told me, ‘I complained about this lump, or I complained about this pain for so long, and they only gave me cream, they only gave me Motrin, they never sent me out for tests or anything. Now they send me here and I have Stage 3 or Stage 4 cancer. Our question is always: What took them so long to get to us, and why did they send them to us when there’s nothing that we can do?”

Art Beeler, a former Butner warden, told NPR it was hard to see inmates arrive at the FMC with late-stage cancer. “It did not happen every day or even every week, but there were cases we received late, and every one of them was frustrating,” Beeler said. “If we received someone who had Stage 4 prostate cancer, who showed indicators early on in the process, we were very frustrated… We knew more than likely the patient would live if they had received treatment early on.”

In March 2022, the Dept of Justice Inspector General audited the BOP’s contract with one of the contractors providing some of the medical services at Butner. The report found the BOP “did not have a reliable, consistent process in place to evaluate timeliness or quality of inmate healthcare.”

The IG report also noted “challenges in transporting inmates to off-site appointments which resulted in a frequent need to reschedule appointments that could delay an inmate’s healthcare.” The contractor told the Inspector General that their staff spent a “significant amount of time” canceling and rescheduling inmate appointments.”

“We believe it is difficult for the BOP to determine whether inmates are receiving care within the required community standard,” the report noted.

Delshon Harding, president of the local union representing Butner officers, told NPR he believes staff shortages are the primary reason inmates go without essential care.

A report issued last week by three federal agencies – including DOJ – concurs. The report found that as of March 2022, 89% of all BOP facilities had one or more clinical position vacancies. Thirteen prisons lacked any staff medical officer. The report noted that “although direct patient care responsibilities can be covered by mid-level practitioners, these types of critical vacancies may require the BOP to bring in staff from other locations on temporary duty assignments, or to use short-term emergency contracts to fill the gaps.”