By Lisa Backus
Journal Inquirer, Manchester, Conn.
MANCHESTER, Conn. — After paying out several million dollars in lawsuits and seeing scathing reports in recent years on the state of inmate medical and mental health care, a new law and new leadership will address some of the issues at Connecticut’s Department of Correction healthcare system, officials said.
Interim DOC Commissioner Sharonda Carlos announced Monday that the DOC’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Byron Kennedy and Chief Operational Officer of Health and Addiction Treatment Robert Richeson have been moved to other duties, and the agency has created a new leadership role: executive director of inmate medical services, which will be filled by Dr. Craig Burns.
As part of the change, Richeson now will oversee healthcare expansion initiatives and service development, with a focus on expanding clinic capacity, reducing bottlenecks in outside specialty referrals, and building partnerships with healthcare networks statewide, Carlos said in a news release.
Kennedy now is serving as director of academic affairs and regulations, and is focused on credentialing, regulatory compliance, HIPAA oversight and the training and education of medical staff.
“This is a human services agency,” Carlos said in the release. “As correctional professionals, we are here to serve the humanity of every individual in our care, and to do everything in our power to support their well-being and address whatever they are facing. That means meeting medical needs, but it also means tending to mental health, addiction struggles, spiritual well-being, education, and developing the skills someone will need to build a successful life when they leave.”
The change in leadership comes as a new law implements sweeping changes in the way the DOC handles inmate healthcare, including banning fees for medical care, prohibiting the denial of care based on the inability to pay fees, allowing inmates to file requests for medical treatment electronically, and creating a Correctional Medical and Health Commission that will draft a 10-year plan to improve health services for incarcerated individuals.
The moves come after years of lawsuits and reports of inadequate and lagging healthcare, including a recent finding by state correctional ombudsman DeVaughn Ward that more than 2,000 inmates were waiting on speciality medical appointments, in some cases for up to three years.
In the weeks since the report, Carlos said in the release that 1,289 speciality appointments have been booked, with 998 completed. The DOC is booking about 250 speciality appointments per week while about 50 to 100 new requests for speciality appointments are being made per week — so they are outpacing demand, she said.
A report and hearing done by the state’s Auditors of Public Accounts also led to criticism of the DOC’s management of healthcare. The hearing occurred days after the state inspector general issued a report saying nurses and physicians with an outside agency contracted by the DOC improperly administered methadone to two inmates at Garner Correctional Institution, leading to their deaths two days apart. Former DOC Commissioner Angel Quiros, who was appointed during the pandemic, announced his retirement shortly after the hearing.
Ward said the new law is one of the most significant correctional healthcare reform measures Connecticut has undertaken in recent years.
“By eliminating medical copays, the bill ensures that no incarcerated person is deterred from seeking necessary medical, dental, mental health, or specialty care because of cost,” Ward said in an email. “By requiring electronically tracked sick call requests and modernizing health record systems, it creates a long-overdue framework for accountability so requests for care are documented, time-stamped, and reviewable rather than disappearing into bureaucracy.”
The legislation strengthens independent oversight by expanding the Office of the Correction Ombuds’ authority to evaluate correctional healthcare delivery and establishing a dedicated mental health care clinician within the office, Ward said. The law also responds directly to concerns raised in a January 2026 Conditions of Confinement Report by requiring an independent audit of prison nutrition and food service, he added.
“Health care in correctional settings is a constitutional obligation, and this legislation is an important step toward a more transparent, accountable, and clinically responsive system,” Ward said.
State Sen. Gary Winfield, D- New Haven, co-chair of the Judiciary Committee that backed the law, said, “This is the first step forward in trying to make significant change in the system.”
The law adds a mental health professional to Ward’s office, requires the DOC to provide medication on time, allows inmates to send complaints directly to the ombudsman rather than first going through a grievance process, and requires the agency to track medical requests to make sure appointments are scheduled on a timely basis.
The DOC took over the management of inmate healthcare in 2018 as a way of saving money and addressing issues that occurred when medical care was being provided by a prison health management system through the University of Connecticut Health Center.
But since the DOC took over, costs have risen, staffing routinely is short, and lawsuits over inadequate or misdiagnosed ailments have continued, published reports said.
The goal in starting to revamp the inmate healthcare system is to provide better service, Winfield said.
“Eight years later I think it’s a system that’s not working, so we are looking at who is over the system and looking at whether it’s an unhealthy system,” Winfield said as he acknowledged there are several parts to the healthcare system that need to be addressed.
Winfield plans on making phone calls as soon as possible to those who are appointing members of the new Correctional Medical and Health Commission to get the body meeting quickly to examine further reforms.
“I think in the past couple of years there has been a growing frustration with the DOC over medical issues,” Winfield said. “As that’s grown, we knew we really needed to get to this. This is the right time for that.”
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