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Healthcare for Jail Inmates

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Healthcare for Jail Inmates
Healthcare for Jail Inmates

Tamera Robinson

HCS/430 Legal Issues in Health Care: Regulation and Compliance

January 29, 2012
Marsha Smith

Healthcare for Jail Inmates

The definition of health care is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well-being through the services offered by the medical and allied health professions. Human beings are entitled to receive adequate healthcare, even those humans locked up for awful crimes. Jailed inmates are more likely than the general public to have health problems, which includes high rates of drug abuse and communicable diseases (Moore, 2005). There is lack of sterilization and the inmates are around different people all day long, which mean that the inmates in the prisons are more open to germs. If their health needs are not addressed while they are in jail, any communicable conditions that they have may spread (Moore, 2005). Some jails must provide healthcare for their inmates and others have outside help, such as The Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is responsible for confining offenders in prisons that are safe, humane and secure. This means that they are also in charge of making sure that inmates receive necessary health care. In November 2007, the BOP housed 166,794 inmates in 114 BOP institutions at 93 locations (The Federal Bureau of Prison’s Efforts to Manage Inmate Health Care, 2008). The BOP is responsible for many institutions that include Federal Correctional Institutions (FCI), United States Penitentiaries (USP), and Federal Prison Camps (FPC). The BOP is not only responsible for the getting adequate health care for inmates; they also take care of the costs, the provision of the health care services, they also delineate health care services provided to the inmates (The Federal Bureau of Prison’s Efforts to Manage Inmate Health Care, 2008). To control the cost of health care for



References: The Federal Bureau of Prison 's Efforts to Manage Inmate Health Care. (2008). Retrieved from http://www.bop.gov Moore, J. (2005, Fall). Public Health behind Bars: Health Care for Jail Inmates. Popular Government, (), 16-23.

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