Correctional Health Services Reports

Access to Health Services Reports

In 2016, the Board required Health + Hospital's Correctional Health Services (CHS) produce an access report in order to monitor compliance with Minimum Standards on Health Care and Mental Health Care and identify strengths of the system as well as major barriers to care. The Board of Correction worked closely with CHS to develop a series of access to care metrics.

In April 2016, CHS started producing monthly access reports using data from its electronic health records. The report monitors each month's approximately 55,000 scheduled health and mental health visits, 10,000 sick call visits, 4,000 health intakes, 600+ mental health referrals, and various other health encounters. The report looks at metrics at each of the twelve facilities and overall. Nationally, this is the most comprehensive real-time reporting on health and mental health care access in jails.

With these metrics, the Board, CHS, and the Department of Correction (DOC) are now better equipped to monitor access and intervene where necessary. CHS and DOC have developed an associated action plan that will guide their collaborative work to improve access.

In the spring of 2017, the Board and CHS reviewed and updated the access report to include:

• description of a wider range of services, including nursing, social work, dental;
• new data on medical intakes;
• detailed data on unscheduled services, including emergencies, injury evaluations, and non-intake lab collections; and
• more accurate reasons for missed visits, allowing for better identification of underlying barriers to access

The new report format, implemented in May 2017, will be further updated as the Board continues to work with CHS and DOC to add information on substance use services, the number of people requesting sick call, and details on why individuals were not produced by DOC for scheduled services.

In 2019, CHS migrated to a new electronic health record system. CHS suspended its production of access reports from June to March 2020. In March 2020, CHS resumed production of its monthly access reports, with updates and changes to metrics and metric description. The report is now provided quarterly, broken out by month. For more details, please read CHS' March 2020 memo detailing revision to the access report.

Young Adults (18-21 year olds) Access to Health Services

Adolescents (16-17 year olds) Access to Health Services