People who are incarcerated have a constitutional right to health care. But in January, California became the first state to secure permission from the Biden administration to use Medicaid for health care in correctional facilities, which will allow officials to use federal funds to cover opioid treatment. The program is costly, with a budget of $283 million for the current fiscal year. Today, the state is one of only a small number in the nation with a comprehensive treatment program across its prison system, an effort that has led to a significant reduction in overdose deaths. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, for substance use treatment in prisons. The same year, state lawmakers approved a far-reaching plan by Gov. In 2019, California prisons recorded their highest rate of overdose deaths and the highest overdose mortality rate for a state prison system nationwide. Ruth Potee, the medical director for the Franklin County Jail in Western Massachusetts, is “like running a psychiatric hospital without treating psychiatric disease.” Expanding Treatment Not treating opioid addiction in correctional facilities, said Dr. “There’s this better understanding that if we’re going to treat the opioid overdose crisis, one of the high-target populations to treat is people in jails and prisons.” Justin Berk, an addiction medicine physician at Brown University and the former medical director for Rhode Island’s Department of Corrections.
“For the first time, there is a trend toward expanding access to treatment in jails and prisons,” said Dr. The state’s efforts also reflect the beginnings of a potential transformation in the nation’s approach to treating addiction in a part of American society that is often neglected. The daily ritual is part of a sprawling health experiment in California that aims to unwind the often lasting damage of opioid use before, during and after incarceration. One by one, inmates deposited the strips in their mouths, then flashed their palms - proof they had not pocketed the drug that was helping to stanch their cravings.
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In blistering 100-degree heat one recent afternoon at Valley State Prison in California’s Central Valley, inmates crowded around small windows in a prison yard to pick up their daily doses of buprenorphine, an opioid addiction medication.Īt one window, Quennie Uy, a nurse, scanned inmate identification cards, then retrieved strips of the medication, slipping them through a sliding panel below the window.
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