The New Mexico Department of Corrections has awarded a new contract to its prison health care provider, agreeing to pay Wexford Health Sources Inc. between $286.5 million and $317.8 million over the next four years.
The total cost of the contract — to provide medical services to about 6,000 inmates in 10 prisons — depends on fluctuations in the inmate population, according to a department spokesperson.
The state has contracted with the Pittsburgh-based, for-profit company for the past five years despite numerous lawsuits in recent years accusing Wexford of delaying, denying or providing poor-quality care, routinely understaffing facilities and being unwilling to comply with public records requests.
Wexford held the contract from 2004 to 2007, when the state ended the deal over concerns about the quality of care the company delivered to inmates.
The state rejected a bid from Wexford in 2016 in favor of another vendor but awarded the company a four-year contract again in 2019 for $246 million. The contract was then extended for an additional year.
The new contract — which Corrections Secretary Alisha Tafoya Lucero signed last week — lasts through 2028 but has provisions allowing for two one-year extensions.
Four other vendors bid on the contract, according to department spokesperson Brittany Roembach.
Roadrunner Health Services LLC submitted the lowest bid — $265.6 million — but was eliminated "as they did not fit the needs of the agency and could not provide Behavioral Health Services," Roembach wrote in an email.
Centurion Correctional Healthcare of NM — the provider that held the contract prior to Wexford — bid $365.9, according to Roembach; NaphCare Inc. bid $363.1 million, and VitalCore Health Strategies bid $343.6 million.
Diamond Pharmacy Services was disqualified from consideration for only offering standalone pharmacy services, Roembach wrote.
Wexford faced more than 50 lawsuits from New Mexico inmates when it held the contract from 2004 to 2007, according to previous reports. As of April, the company had been named a defendant in about 90 lawsuits since 2019, online court records show, with most filed by prisoners alleging inadequate health care.
Several more have been filed in the past six months, including one brought by four corrections officers in September. That suit states, "Wexford's medical care for inmates is severely deficient causing conflict between correctional officers and inmates who blame the correctional officers for the lack of care."
A certified nursing assistant who had worked for Wexford since 2020 filed a whistleblower lawsuit last month against the company and the state, alleging she was fired for her persistent reporting of "improper and unlawful acts" by the company, the Corrections Department and its food services vendor.
"Wexford routinely understaffed medical personnel" at Central New Mexico Correctional Facility, where she worked, the woman wrote in her lawsuit. She alleged she was required to perform various medical tasks for which she was neither qualified nor licensed.
Understaffing frequently resulted in delays in patient care, the woman claims in her lawsuit.
The current contract for Wexford, like the previous one, requires the company to credit the state when staffing levels fall below 90% of agreed upon levels.
Wexford credited the state $3.1 million for staffing shortages in the last fiscal year, Roembach wrote in an April email.Â
An inmate at Southern New Mexico Correctional facility filed a lawsuit last week accusing the company of cruel and unusual punishment, claiming he'd been asking for more than a year for orthopedic shoes and socks and cream and bandages to properly care for the stumps of his two amputated feet.
The state received 23 tort claim notices in 2023 that named Wexford. Of those, 11 resulted in lawsuits, according to the state General Services Department.
Wexford did not respond to a call seeking comment Monday.
Parrish Collins, an Albuquerque attorney who has filed 30 lawsuits against Wexford on behalf of inmates and staff — including multiple complaints alleging the medical provider allowed minor infections to go untreated until they caused serious damage to inmates' hearts, brains and spines — calls the state's rehiring of the vendor "a bad decision like most made by the Corrections Department."
Collins and other inmate advocates have argued in recent years hiring for-profit companies to provide medical care to the state's inmates results in poor-quality care and high costs for taxpayers.
"I've been pushing for [the University of New Mexico Hospital] to take over the contract, but no one is really listening," Collins said Monday.
Roembach declined to comment on why the department would award a new contract to a vendor that has been named a defendant in so many lawsuits.
"We can’t comment about litigation against Wexford," she wrote in an email.
Roembach did not respond to a question asking whether the department had considered hiring a public entity instead of a private company to provide inmate medical care.
