A file image of a Pima County Jail inmate.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved spending an additional $2 million for the controversial healthcare provider at the county jail.
Naphcare has been the contracted healthcare provider at the county jail since 2021, and Tuesday’s move from the Board brings the total contract amount to about $64.8 million. But the company has struggled to meet their expected staffing requirements in the past.
The extra money, according to the contract, will pay for “staffing needed in specific high-volume, high-risk care areas.”
Pima County’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francisco Garcia says Medically Assisted Treatment (MAT) is one of those areas, and one that is helping with a dramatic decrease in overdose deaths compared to just two years ago.
The Arizona Healthcare Cost Containment System defines MAT as a combination of medication, counseling and behavioral therapies for substance use disorders.
“We have had no deaths in over 14 months associated with overdosing, we have had a tremendous reduction in the number of overdoses occurring within the facility. Just by those two metrics alone, this has been a wild success,” Garcia said.
According to county data, in-custody deaths peaked in 2021 and 2022 with 10 each year, and 57 people in total have died in the county jail since 2017. Reporting by AZLuminaria called the county jail an “unconstitutional hole,” and the widely publicized community backlash to the high number of deaths have made the facility one of the biggest thorns in the county’s side.
About 2,000 detainees have enrolled in MAT, and about 1/3rd of the jail’s population are on it at any given time. According to a county memo, overdoses requiring hospital treatment have decreased by 40%.
Naphcare “has played an essential role in elevating the quality of care,” and extending the contract is “not only prudent but necessary,” the memo goes on.
This is a major shift in tone for the county, that two years ago was withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars when the healthcare provider was failing to provide adequate staffing levels.
A memo from Nov. 7, 2023 details that during a peak staffing crisis, the county withheld as much as $360,000 a month from Naphcare. Although the penalization eased a few months later, the average monthly staffing adjustment totaled about $188,000.
Now, the county says they, along with the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and Naphcare, will qualify for the National Commission on Correctional Health Care’s Pinnacle Award, which according to the county is the “highest honor in correctional healthcare.”
County Administrator Jan Lesher acknowledged the skepticism the community may have in receiving a healthcare award just two years separated from the jail’s deadly past.
“To say we won an award, I think makes people skeptical about the value of the award itself,” she said. “It has been getting better every year. We have really an outstanding group on the county side who's been watching and monitoring the contract with the health care provider, and we're making sure that we're providing the staff that's needed in the jail.”
The current contract with Naphcare expires in September 2025.
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