Health care delivery strategies for criminal offenders

Men and women under correctional supervision may be the most challenging population of public health concern. Prison inmates, parolees, and probationers experience prevalent infectious disease including HIV and hepatitis C. Many supervised individuals have significant mental or behavioral health problems that require clinical intervention. The U.S. correctional population is also rapidly growing, and now includes more than 5 million men and women. Concerns about quality, accessibility, and cost of correctional care have prompted calls for managed care models in this population. This paper reviews pertinent experiences within Medicaid managed care and suggests four interconnected strategies--outreach, discharge planning, entitlement security, and case management--to improve the quality and efficiency of correctional care.