The Utah Department of Corrections has hit a snag in its new inmate prescription management program, causing a backlog of thousands of prescriptions that have yet to be filled, officials say.
The problems arose as the department migrated its data to a new program called Fusion.
"A lot of the challenges came in the form of having good data to fill prescriptions from," said Brian Nielson, executive director of the Department of Corrections.
About 6,000 people are incarcerated in Utah. About 2,500 of them are at the new state prison in Salt Lake City. Those 2,500 inmates have 15,000 ongoing, active prescriptions for medications, and the pharmacy at the prison fills about 30,000 prescriptions every month, Nielson said.
On Wednesday, about 8,000 prescriptions needed to be reviewed — that requires determining whether they were up for a refill, whether the data could support filling the prescriptions, and then filling and delivering the medications, Nielson said. On Thursday morning, that queue was down to 4,400 prescriptions.
"And that queue will go up and down because of some of the resolutions that we're doing, and some of the resolutions Fusion is doing," he added.
The news comes after a 2021 audit by the Office of the Legislative Auditor General recommended that the Utah state prison system's Clinical Services Bureau improve systemic deficiencies, ensure patients have access to direction from health care professionals — including correct treatments and medications — and follow internal policies and best practices for inmate health care.
Nielson said the prison is within "days" of being back to normal operation "and knowing that we're delivering the services that we know we're required to."
On a typical day before the system change, the prison pharmacy delivered about 1,000 prescriptions per day.
The backlog prompted an all-hands-on-deck response from prison health care workers and the Utah Department of Health and Human Services, which provided support staff members including nurses and pharmacists. Health care workers are seeing "hundreds" of patients each day to make sure their medical needs are being met, according to the executive director.
Nursing staff and pharmacy techs are reviewing the records to see if they need to add or correct data to make it usable in the new system, Nielson added.
"Fusion has been actively involved in helping solve these issues and resolve these problems," he said.
When asked how many critical medical situations inmates have faced as they wait for their prescriptions, Nielson said the question is "difficult to answer" because the prison provided inmates a 30-day supply of prescriptions deemed most essential, including those for conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.
Now that the new prison has been in operation for over three weeks, the problems with the new prescription management system came into full focus as those critical medications came up for refill, Nielson said.
Despite the issues, Nielson said he has confidence in the new prescription management program moving forward and would not consider moving back to the previous program.
When asked to respond to reports from family members that inmates have been waiting weeks to receive care, Nielson said if someone has a concern, they should reach out to prison officials. He said the prison offers "around the clock" access to security staff to whom inmates can express concerns, and medical workers visit each unit once every day.