State approves Fulton parolee-focused nursing center

A state committee unanimously approved a proposed 24-hour nursing center geared toward recently released offenders who require around the clock care.

The Missouri Health Facilities Review Committee approved the application for a certificate of need from CorrectLife, a Georgia-based company, at its meeting Monday.

The purpose of the nursing center in Fulton, according to the application, is to serve “medically fragile parolees and inmates eligible for parole that currently have limited access to skilled nursing care outside the prison system.”

According to the Missouri Department of Corrections, there are hundreds of parole-eligible offenders who continue to be held by the state because they cannot access medical care otherwise. As a result, some inmates stay months or years past their intended release date to receive care from the department’s health care provider, Corizon Health.

As of June 8, there were 747 inmates with a release date who require 24-hour care, Department of Corrections spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said. It costs the state about $58.85 per day, or $21,480.25 per year, to house one person in an adult Missouri corrections facility, Pojmann said.

Once the offender is released and admitted to the CorrectLife center, the state is no longer financially responsible for their care.

Hundreds of offenders “who are deemed good candidates for parole either cannot be released or experience a delay in release because of our inability to secure placement in a skilled nursing facility where their complex physical and/or behavioral health care needs can be addressed,” Pojmann said.

Medical centers turn down parolees at different rates depending on the nature of their convictions. For example, sex offenders that require 24-hour care stay an average of 50 months past their intended release date, where nonviolent offenders average six months.

Pojmann said any nursing facility that accepts “justice-involved Missourians is sorely needed and greatly appreciated.” Both Pojmann and the CorrectLife application point out that the state’s prison population is only getting larger.

“The size of this population of medically fragile parolees and parole eligible inmates is large and growing rapidly, due, in part, to the aging of the inmate population,” the CorrectLife application said.

The plan includes a 150-bed, 58,000-square-foot center, which will be located near the Fulton Medical Center. The application said the center would be equipped with several security measures:

“The facility will feature extensive cameras both inside and outside the building, as well as electronic fingerprint keypads requiring an authorized fingerprint to enter and exit each unit and the facility itself.”

CorrectLife already operates a Georgia facility geared towards parolees that opened in January 2017, attorney Richard Hill said. Hill said that center has produced $235,000 in tax revenue with no security issues.

The center, which is estimated to cost $18.5 million to build, is expected to be operational by Nov. 1, 2020.