New $15M medical wing at Md. detention center to improve inmate care, reduce expenses

Frederick County Sheriff’s Office

By Ceoli Jacoby
The Frederick News-Post, Md.

FREDERICK, Md. — People incarcerated at the Frederick County Adult Detention Center will soon have expanded access to in-house health care with the opening of a new medical unit at the facility.

At a ribbon-cutting event on Friday, Frederick County Sheriff Chuck Jenkins said the facility’s current medical unit is “long obsolete” and “not nearly large enough to serve the inmate population.”

The new 14,046-square-foot medical unit, which will start receiving patients in mid-December, has 13 medical cells or wards — eight for men, four for women and one for juveniles. The current medical unit has a total of eight cells.

Other than the additional bed space, Jenkins said, the most significant upgrades over the current medical unit are a collection of interview rooms — where patients can privately discuss their concerns with health care practitioners — and a secure pharmacy room.

Michael Cronise, the acting warden of the detention center, said that up until now, medications have been kept in storage lockers that are “scattered throughout the jail.”

“We have a lot of stuff that we’ve been holding onto that we can actually utilize now,” Cronise said.

The new medical unit also includes three exam rooms, four negative pressure rooms for patients with airborne diseases such as tuberculosis, a full dental suite, an X-ray room and a padded safe room for patients who may pose a danger to themselves.

A nurses’ station is situated between the male and female wings, and the walls are painted with light blue designs to promote a sense of calm among patients.

An enclosed room with security cameras, a metal picnic table, and a window to let in some outside air and natural light serve as the new medical unit’s recreation area.

People in the medical unit will also have access to TVs and a tablet for education and video visitation.

Even with the limitations of the current medical unit, Jenkins said, inmates at the detention center are provided with “a full range of services.”

The new medical unit will enable more of those services to be rendered inside the facility, reducing the number of transports to Frederick Health Hospital and potentially saving the county “thousands of dollars in medical expenses and overtime for correctional officers,” Jenkins said.

The Frederick County Sheriff’s Office first identified the need for a new medical unit in 2015, Jenkins said, but funding for the project was not included in the county’s budget until fiscal year 2018. The total cost was expected to be $15.3 million.

To date, Frederick County Chief Financial Officer Daniel Lewis wrote in an email on Friday, the project has incurred $13.2 million in costs.

Of that amount, just over $7 million came from the county and the rest was covered by three separate state grants for design and construction work.

“We are hopeful it will complete under budget once payments tied to this project’s close-out have been made,” Lewis wrote.

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