The room on the eighth floor of the Ohio State University Medical Center is staffed 24 hours a day, the board on the wall lists patients on color-coded magnets and 16 monitors record patient movement. No, this is not a nurse’s station, it’s the captain’s office of a prison ward.
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections operates an inmate facility in Doan Hall.
Prisoners are constantly monitored and may be anywhere in the medical center at any time. Pink indicates a high-risk security patient, blue is normal security and yellow is females. Solitary and death-row prisoners are always pink.
“We treat minimum to super-max here,” said Capt. Larry Smith, a ward supervisor.
The ward, off limits to the public, has 23 beds and a holding cell to house patients transferred from all corrections facilities around the state. Two sets of entry doors are locked and protected with armed guards. Most rooms have four patient beds and every room has its own corrections officer.
Assigned officers, armed with guns, accompany prisoners during all medical procedures, including operations when they wear a gown on top of their uniforms. All officers are trained in weapons and self-defense.
“It’s ingrained in these officers,” said Warden Rod Francis. “No matter what happens, that’s your post and you stay there.”
Not all inmates are housed on the ward. Those needing specialty care are scattered around the medical center in rooms on wards that treat specific illnesses. For example, heart-attack patients are on the cardiology floor, prisoners giving birth are on the obstetrics ward and cancer patients are in the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital.
Prisoners may be next door to civilian patients but are never in the same room.
Accompanying these patients in the room is one armed guard 24 hours a day, unless the prisoner is considered high risk and demands maximum security, when two officers are assigned.
“In no other prison would you have a one-on-one supervision level,” Francis said.
The number of inmate patients on public floors changes daily and sometimes within the day; typically there are about eight to 15 prisoners in specialty wards around the medical center.
Every inmate is locked to the bed by a steel leg shackle.
The doctors, nurses and staff are all employed by OSU Hospitals as part of a contract the corrections department began about 10 years ago.
The department decided then to design a prison facility as part of one medical center, as opposed to the 15 or so it had been using to care for inmates around the state. It’s easier and more economical to supervise all inmate patients at one location.
The relationship between OSU Hospitals and the state corrections department has financial benefits for both. OSU generates a steady flow of income, and the department is able to house more inmate-patients under fewer officers.
State prisoner-transport vans are on campus daily. Corrections officers and inmate patients are required to enter OSU Hospitals through rear doors not accessible to the public. They are usually locked in a basement holding-cell before being seen by medical staff.
The corrections staff is constantly vigilant when moving inmates throughout the hospital, preferring to use utility elevators and to transport them during off-hours when there is less public interaction. All inmates wear hand-cuffs and leg irons when in transit, unless they are confined to a bed and attached to it by restraints.
“We want to stay out of sight and out of mind,” Smith said.
But many students and staff are unaware they’re sharing campus with convicted murders and other time-serving criminals.
“That’s ridiculous,” said Betsy Blatnik, a senior in textile and clothing who has most of her classes in Campbell Hall, less than 500 yards from the hospital rear doors. “Think about how many women are in the parking lots late at night.”
Compared to a prison, the medical center is an environment of greater risk because there are less barriers and no fences. No inmate has ever escaped while a patient at OSU Hospitals.
“They said noone could escape from Alcatraz too, but now we know people did,” Blatnik said.
Don’t expect to see the likes of movie icon Hannibal Lecter housed permanently in the OSU facility. Severe psychiatric inmates are housed at Oakwood Correctional institution in Lima, Ohio and the criminally insane are confined to another dedicated facility on Columbus’ west side.
But when high-risk security prisoners from these psychiatric facilities need physical medical treatment, they will come to OSU. Hannibal Lecter, a super-max security risk, would have two armed guards.
State law requires inmates to receive medical care commensurate with Medicare and Medicaid guidelines.
“We’re providing the same level of care they can get if they were on the street, no more, no less,” Francis said.
Many of the state’s inmates arrive in prison in poor health and few take good care of themselves while incarcerated, the warden said. Cancer and Hepatitis A and B seem to afflict a higher percentage of inmates than the general public. The corrections department employs a full-time dietitian and medical education is available to inmates at all facilities.
Most prisoner emergency room visits are milder than the typical population. Injuries include a fair amount of physical injuries from athletics and fighting but usually do not include gunshot wounds and auto accident victims.
The increased number of prisoners having babies at the medical center corresponds with the growing number of female prisoners in the state. These patients spend two or three days in the hospital for normal deliveries and four or five days when there is a C-section delivery.
“We just had four (inmate patients) deliver babies not long ago,” said Lt. Christine Patterson, a corrections officer at the hospital.
The corrections department follows state laws regarding child custody and care, which usually relates to the incarceration period for the mother.
The warden has found that the contract with OSU has additional benefits when dealing with the inmates’ families concerned about a loved one’s medical care. Family members often complained when the inmate was taken to regional hospitals around the state, usually because they weren’t familiar with the facility.
“OSU carries name recognition that comforts patient family concerns,” Francis said. “They know they’re getting the best quality care.”
Families are allowed supervised visitation with inmate patients, limited to two hours for security reasons.
The warden splits his time between the OSU unit and the Corrections Medical Center, a dedicated medical prison he oversees on Columbus’s South Side. The skilled nursing facility has 100 short-term beds and 65 long-term beds, has three full-time physicians and serves as a rehabilitation center for inmate patients following procedures at OSU Hospitals.
“We can discharge inmates from OSU quicker to a skilled nursing facility, which saves money,” Francis said.
The South Side facility came under fire earlier this month when inmate Vincent Allen, an HIV positive patient under the corrections department’s care, died March 15 at OSU Hospitals. Allen entered OSU Hospitals March 6, was transferred to the rehabilitation facility March 9, was sent back to OSU March14, and died the next day.
The Ohio Highway Patrol is investigating the inmate’s death; a nurse at the South Side facility has been placed on leave while the investigation is under way.
