Health care delivery is an expensive business. However, a program can succeed in delivering quality care at a minimized cost by effectively managing resources. At the Utah Department of Corrections, this is accomplished through careful decision-making, cost consciousness, and a preventive medical philosophy.
The Clinical Service Bureau strikes a delicate balance between meeting our patients' needs and being responsible stewards of public funds.
Our current per capita costs, as of 2011, are fewer than $4,000 per inmate, per year. That's far below the national average, and the lowest in the nation among states that incarcerate fewer than 10,000 offenders. The graphic below displays the annual cost per inmate, per year for states with fewer than 10,000 inmates in the U.S., according to a 2011 edition of Corrections Compendium. To the right is a 2007 Corrections Compendium comparison of Utah prison medical expenses compared to the national average that year.
The difference is partially the result of age demographics (the Utah inmate average age is lower than the national average) and a policy against elective procedures. Additional savings occur via tight control of chronic health care issues, the judicious use of compassionate medical release and selective medication use that meets medical objectives at the lowest possible cost.
The Utah Department of Corrections also ranks in the lowest bracket of inmate health care costs in the Western United States. A review of neighboring state departments of corrections indicates a daily health care cost of more than $16, compared to UDC's health care costs for fiscal year 2007 of $9.74 per inmate per day.