By Melisa Franklin
Rare is the person who starts their career in correctional health. We don’t blame you if providing medical care to incarcerated individuals wasn’t on your college dream board. The good news is that working in correctional health is still a viable option, and it might be the perfect opportunity to reach new patients and boost your practice’s revenue.
Prison inmates are entitled to healthcare and because inmates are at higher risk for certain conditions and often haven’t received adequate care prior to incarceration, their needs can be unique. While there's a clear need for high-quality providers in correctional health, you might still be wondering if it’s right for you.
Flexible Schedules
Particularly among contractors in correctional health, the ability to control your schedule is seen as a major advantage. Physical therapist Audrey Morrell worked in private practice for more than 20 years before becoming an independent contractor at a federal prison.
“It’s almost a dream job,” she said. “I have the flexibility of making my own schedule. They kick you out at 4:00. Also, if I don’t want to work the next day because there’s something I want to do, I just don’t schedule any inmates.”
When Jason Williams, owner of Sound Diagnostics of Northwest Florida, began his career in correctional health, he started by taking diagnostic imaging devices on site to a federal prison facility.
“I was able to work my own hours, I was able to come home in the evenings, I was able to coach my son’s Little League team. I was there for all the stuff. It was wonderful,” he said.
Competitive Pay
In the early days of his business, Williams hustled for his contracts. Having launched a new company, he had to make it work. “I started reaching out to different facilities and said, ‘I have children to raise, we’ve got bills, I’ve got to get busier.’ I just needed an opportunity. One thing led to another and now I’m up to roughly 16 federal prisons in the country that I do,” he said.
As a contractor, Morrell says that if she doesn’t work, she doesn’t get paid. “But I get paid pretty well compared to the outside, so it offsets that,” she said. “When I talk to my other therapist friends, as soon as I say with the pay being on the higher side and with the flexibility of the schedule, of having the medical staff right there, of getting equipment pretty easily, then them thinking negatively about working in a prison changes.”
Focus on Providing Care
For some professionals, running your own practice means stepping back from what you enjoy most: treating patients.
Getting out of the race of paperwork and billing, and instead focusing on providing care, was one of the upsides for Morrell. "As a physical therapist, it’s really a great job because we don’t deal with insurance companies,” she said. “We don’t have to do six-page evaluations. It takes away a lot of the negatives that we see outside of the prison, and it lets me really just do physical therapy.
Having more support in correctional health than she did in private practice is another bonus to Morrell.
“I have direct access to x-rays. I have direct access to the doctors and the nurse practitioners and the physician assistants. We all work as a team because we’re all right there the whole day. They bring me on as a team member and it’s a good collaboration.”
It’s not just support from within the prison, either. By working with the right third-party administrator, you’ll have the logistical support that makes your day-to-day not only possible but also simple.
BetterNight, a fully virtual sleep clinic, relies on Seven Corners Healthcare to manage the complex communication between the company and the prisons. “Both sides really have to have the ability to communicate and understand each other’s needs,” says Bill Kleiman, Vice President of Business Development at BetterNight. “The people I work with are very good at what they do. They care."
Is It Safe?
“I’ve never felt unsafe in any way,” Morrell said. “As a matter of fact, I worked in nursing homes for many years, and trust me, I’ve been abused more by those patients than I have in the federal prison system. The federal prison system has a lot of checks and balances to keep staff safe. That’s their priority. My job is to get them back to daily living activities in the prison or outside.”
There’s a Place for You in Correctional Health
Expanding your practice to include correctional health doesn’t mean you abandon your current business model or patients. Many providers simply expand their services to also provide care for inmates. With flexible partnerships that include on-site care as well as mobile services and telehealth, there may be more opportunity in correctional health than you realized.
Melisa Franklin is the Vice President of Seven Corners Healthcare, building trusted relationships and driving growth for the business and its partners for 11 years. Seven Corners Healthcare is the largest third-party administrator of federal inmate healthcare in the country.
