Measures are result of settling class-action suit with inmates
By Patrick Lester
The Morning Call
BUCKS COUNTY, Pa. — Bucks County will take a number of steps to improve and monitor medical care and safety in its prison as part of a settlement reached with prisoners who sued over a 2002 staph infection outbreak.
The inmates will receive no monetary award under the settlement, approved Wednesday by federal Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter following a hearing at U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.
The county has agreed to allow environmental health and infectious disease experts to monitor the prison for two years and to report findings every six months. It agreed to additional operational improvements designed to improve medical care.
Buckwalter, in approving the settlement, called it “fair, reasonable and adequate.”
The judge’s ruling puts an end to the 51/2-year-old class-action suit, one of more than a dozen filed in the years after a 2002 outbreak of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a drug-resistant strain of staphylococcus bacteria commonly called MRSA. At least 32 prisoners, guards and family members were infected.
“We know that the medical and correctional staff of our Department of Corrections and Department of Health is deeply committed to the security, health, well-being and rehabilitation of our inmates,” County Commissioner James Cawley said in a news release. “The settlement agreement we entered into underscores that commitment.”
Attorneys representing the inmates could not be reached for comment Thursday afternoon.
Bucks County has spent more than $2.5 million defending and settling lawsuits involving MRSA claims. It has spent thousands more on treatment and new procedures to halt the bacteria’s spread.
In 2005, citing the county’s slow reaction to the outbreak, a federal jury awarded two inmates $1.2 million in damages in the costliest of the MRSA verdicts and settlements against the county.
MRSA is a type of bacteria that can cause skin infections that look like pimples and may be red, swollen, painful and filled with pus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is contracted by skin to skin contact with someone already infected or with items and surfaces that have MRSA on them.
The suit settled Wednesday named the county, its commissioners and other county health department and prison officials as defendants.
In addition to allowing monitoring of its prison, the county agreed to:
Continue reviewing the addition of an overnight infirmary at the prison.
Transfer inmates to another facility for medical treatment in the absence of an overnight infirmary.
Create two nursing positions at the dispensary.
Create a videotape describing the potential sources, causes and prevention of MRSA infections for use in training of corrections officers and inmates.
Assign inmates with several occurrences of MRSA to a newly added public health nurse for treatment.
It’s not known how much those additional measures will cost the county.
Bucks officials have said they took steps several years after the outbreak to provide health education for inmates, new bunking arrangements and screening and after-care for MRSA-infected patients.
Bucks County Prison officials got rid of inmates’ washcloths, switched to single-use bars of soap and overhauled laundry procedures to better ensure germs on linens and clothing are wiped out.
Everytime an inmate shows up with a suspicious cut or rash, Bucks County taxpayers pay $30 to test for MRSA. If that test is positive, the county pays another $100 for follow-up testing.
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