The Henry County Sheriff’s Office is currently interviewing for more than a dozen positions at the Adult Detention Center after deciding to transition all medical services from a private contractor to in-house employees.
When the Adult Detention Center opened in March 2022, Henry County Sheriff Wayne Davis said the previous administration elected to use a contract medical vendor for its services.
“At that time, that went out to bid and multiple medical vendors had an opportunity to bid on it, in which Wellpath was selected to provide medical services for the jail,” he said.
When he took over as sheriff in 2023, Davis said he and his office looked into how they could improve things.
“So, we have done quite a lengthy study on looking into the services provided by Wellpath. I really need to give a lot of credit to my staff here. They put countless hours into this,” he said.
Davis noted that one factor leading to the decision was that the current contract with Wellpath is up for renewal on June 30.
“There were a number of reasons why we elected to not renew the contract. Number one, Wellpath did not fulfill their staffing metrics according to the contract set in place. What that means is we were paying for more staff than they were providing,” he said.
Davis cited one example: Wellpath was obligated to provide a medical director, who must be a doctor.
“That doctor could work remotely and be accessible, but that has to be done sometimes because it’s not always the best practice. For example, that medical director for Wellpath only came into the facility one time in three years and that’s just not acceptable,” he said.
Another factor was the contract cost. Davis said the contract with Wellpath was about $1.7 million, and would have increased to more than $1.9 million on July 1.
“So when we looked at this, we were able to hire two part-time employees, which is a part-time medical director who will be in the building multiple times a week, one nurse practitioner who’s on a part-time basis and will be in the building multiple times a week,” he said.
There will also be 12 full-time positions, including four registered nurses (RNs), four licensed practical nurses (LPNs), and four certified medication technicians (CMTs).
“We can provide all of that at a cost savings that at a minimum would be hundreds of thousands of dollars and on the high end could save the taxpayers up to a million dollars annually,” Davis said. “So in essence, the best way to put it is we can provide a much higher level of service for less money at the cost of the taxpayers. In addition to that, they are Sheriff’s Office employees to which we have full oversight of.”
Davis said he has not received any pushback on the change.
“I think obviously anytime you can provide a better service for less money it’s an absolute win-win,” he said.
Wellpath was essentially a middleman in the process, Davis said, as the office would pay the company, and they would hire nurses to work in the facilities.
“Then they (Wellpath) got a huge markup on just the hiring and personnel management. Well, I just don’t see that it’s worth the taxpayers in Henry County paying hundreds of thousands of extra dollars for a middleman vendor when we can do it directly ourselves, and again, have direct oversight, provide a better, higher level of service for less money,” he said.
The window for applications has closed, and the department is currently conducting interviews to fill the 14 positions.
