New Louisville jail health care provider gets 3-year, $47M contract. Here are the details

Louisville Metro Government will pay the jail’s new health care provider, the controversial Tennessee company YesCare, more than $15 million a year, according to a contract obtained by The Courier Journal under Kentucky’s open records law.

The figure is significantly more than the $9.1 million the city was paying the old health care provider, Wellpath, in fiscal year 2022-23, which ended on June 30.

Deputy Mayor David James and Metro Corrections Director Jerry Collins told The Courier Journal the jump in price was a result of new and expanded services, including:

• An infirmary and pharmacy inside the facility

• Increased group and individual therapy

• The ability to evaluate whether someone is competent to stand trial within the jail

• Expanded mental health and re-entry staff

• Medically assisted treatment for prisoners with substance abuse disorder

“The infirmary is going to allow us to reduce costs by being able to treat folks here — approximately five or seven beds — that normally would have went to the hospital,” Collins said. “We have a lot of folks come in with acute medical conditions, and not having the ability to do that really was driving our costs [up] by having to send folks to U of L.”

According to the contract The Courier Journal obtained last week, YesCare’s services went into effect on March 1 and will last for an initial term of three years.

YesCare will receive $15 million the first year, $15.6 million the second year and $16.2 million in the third year of the contract.

Those amounts are based on an average jail population of 1,400 people. If the population goes higher than 1,400, YesCare will be paid more. If there are fewer than 1,250 people in the jail “a credit will be provided” the contract states.

While Wellpath is no longer the health care provider at the jail, Collins said YesCare hired about 70 Wellpath employees, while bringing on 25 new YesCare employees.

"That's common," Collins said. "You can't ship folks in from out of state."

On paper, YesCare is new, having been created after its predecessor Corizon restructured in a controversial bankruptcy move called the “Texas Two-Step” that involved offloading debt onto a new company while Corizon executives formed a third company, YesCare, to do business.

Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. were among nine U.S. senators who penned a letter in October condemning Corizon’s restructuring as “abusive” and saying it was an attempt to avoid liability stemming from lawsuits over substandard health care.

Corizon was the health care provider for Louisville Metro Department of Corrections up until 2013. The company departed Louisville after a spate of jail deaths the year before, some of which jail leadership said Corizon “may” have been responsible for.

In 2013, then-LMDC director John Bolton told The Courier Journal he was “disturbed” by “service delivery gaps in the health care” provided by Corizon.

Last week, James told The Courier Journal he stood by the decision to go with YesCare.

“We checked around different places, like for example: Lexington has had them for 20 years, and they had nothing but rave reviews for them. And so we’ve been having, you know, good results with them also,” he said. “I think they’re a good company. Any company that is involved in this kind of business, it’s going to have its moments — and they’re no different.”

James and Collins said the committee evaluating bids in response to the jail health care request for proposals awarded YesCare the highest score. According to the request for proposals, cost carried only a 30% weight on the evaluation of bids.

Collins said five companies, including Wellpath, put in bids. All the companies, he said, had similar price points.

The contract includes an indemnity clause, with YesCare agreeing to hold Metro Government harmless “from and against any claims against Metro proximately caused by negligence in treatment rendered by YesCare personnel.”

According to USA Today, more than a dozen government entities across the country claim Corizon violated its indemnity clauses with them, leaving them with expensive bills when it restructured.

“We’re comfortable with the contract that we’re in and wouldn’t have gotten in the contract if we didn’t feel comfortable with it,” said James, when asked about the indemnity clause and the issues other government entities have faced with them.

Collins echoed those sentiments.

“We did the independent bidding process and they came out — we still did our due diligence, and we feel comfortable with YesCare coming in,” he said.

At a press conference in April 2023, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg announced the city would put out a request for proposals for a new health care provider at LMDC as part of a series of “seriously needed reforms”

The city had faced calls from jail reform advocates to cancel its contract with Wellpath amid a spike in deaths at LMDC, where 12 incarcerated people died in less than a year spanning 2021-22.

The new provider, Greenberg said, would take over services starting after Wellpath’s contract expired on July 31, 2023.

Last June, ahead of the contract's expiration, Louisville Metro Government quietly extended Wellpath’s contract through the end of February 2024. When asked last July about the delay in putting out a request for proposals and selecting a new health care provider, a Greenberg spokesperson denied there was a delay, telling The Courier Journal “this was the timeline all along.”

While there was a sharp uptick of in-custody deaths spanning 2021-22, the number of deaths dropped in 2023.

“Our last overdose (death) has been over 15 months, the last suicide has been right at a year next month,” Collins said. “So, knock on wood. We’ve done a lot of things to contribute to that.”

Installing the overdose-reversing medication Narcan in every dorm, doubling down on efforts to stop drugs from entering the facility, installing cameras in single-person cells and an increased focus on mental health are among the changes Collins credits with the drop in deaths.

Reach reporter Josh Wood at jwood@courier-journal.com or on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @JWoodJourno.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: YesCare taking over for Wellpath at Louisville Metro Corrections