Poor performance by the Delaware Department of Correction’s medical vendor continues to “significantly” hamper the department’s efforts to get out from under supervision by the U.S. Justice Department, according to the fourth report by an independent monitor overseeing the state prison system. “The monitoring team continues to be concerned over the lack of stable and effective leadership at the vendor level,” independent monitor Joshua W. Martin III said in a report. “As the monitoring team emphasized in previous reports, without stable and effective leadership, the state will be significantly hampered in its attempts to become compliant with the [memorandum of agreement between the United States Department of Justice and the State of Delaware].”
According to the Wilmington News Journal, problems listed in the 236-page report include: Patients spent long periods of time at the Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution infirmary; Vaughn Correctional Center’s medical director does not have an office in which to perform chart reviews, audits and other quality assurance tasks; while visiting the Sussex Correctional Institution, the monitoring team found a patient who had been sent to a hospital, but there was no note in his record.