Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, September 11, 1995 TAG: 9509110129
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Prison records confirm the deaths of at least seven inmates at the Greensville Correctional Center from January until earlier this summer. Four of the inmates were receiving dialysis treatment, the records show.
Dr. Deborah Kay, assistant chief medical examiner, said the deaths of all individuals in state custody - natural or unnatural - are reviewed by her office.
All the deaths in question were of natural causes, she said, but while all such cases are reviewed by her office, autopsies are not performed after every death.
``We have a number of cases under review at this point,'' she said.
Greensville is the only Virginia prison with an accredited hospital where many seriously ill inmates in the state prison system are sent. ARA Health Services provides medical care at the Jarratt prison under contract with the state.
Last month, the Department of Corrections acknowledged that three men receiving dialysis treatment had died of renal failure at Greensville this year.
Friday, it was confirmed that, in addition to the three renal deaths, David Frank Jones, another diabetic and dialysis patient, died March 30 at Greensville.
Kay said Jones was the subject of an autopsy, and a ruling on the cause of his death is pending.
The July 17 death of another inmate, Holley Foster, also was under investigation by the medical examiner's office. The results of that probe also are pending, the Corrections Department said.
The Corrections Department maintains that diabetics and other inmates at the prison hospital get proper care.
``We really expend a lot of serious effort'' on dialysis patients at Greensville, said Dr. Tom Gensler, the chief medical officer for St. Louis-based Correctional Medical Systems, a subsidiary of ARA Health Services. ``We have a nephrologist, a kidney specialist,'' on staff who ``reviews every case, every week.''
He said the three men who died of renal failure had other grave medical problems, as well.
Inmate Walter Apperson, 41, a longtime dialysis patient at Greensville, strongly disagrees with Gensler's assessment of the unit. He told the newspaper he thinks 10 dialysis patients have died this year, not four, as prison records show.
Apperson, who is serving 54 years for armed robbery, second-degree murder and other offenses, wrote the newspaper that the quality of care decreased when Correctional Medical Services took over the dialysis operation in July 1992.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB