The Victorian government has entered into a fresh agreement outsourcing health care in publicly run prisons to an overseas company, frustrating the state's Aboriginal legal group, which claims the practice is fuelling service gaps for prisoners.
Correct Care Australasia (CCA) currently holds the contract to deliver health care across Victoria's 13 publicly run prisons and youth justice centres, but that agreement will expire in July.
The government has decided not to renew its contract with CCA, but has signed a new five-year agreement with US-owned contractor GEO Group Australia.
It comes as CCA and the Victorian government are being sued by the family of Veronica Nelson, who passed away in her Dame Phyllis Frost prison cell in 2020 after repeated calls for help over the intercom.
Her family has granted permission to use her image.
A coronial inquest into the Gunditjmara, Dja Dja Wurrung, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta woman's death, the findings of which are expected to handed down within weeks, heard opportunities to save her life were missed due to decisions made by both prison staff and health workers.
Several members of a medical panel told the coroner Veronica should have been sent to hospital after her first health assessment by CCA staff when she arrived at the prison.
The general manager of the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre also told the inquest she was concerned the "under-resourced" medical service was not well equipped to support the women there.
In its evidence to the inquest, CCA defended its overall delivery of health services, saying it met benchmarks in its government contract.
CCA was previously part of new provider company
On its website, CCA states it was previously part of GEO Australia before it was acquired by US-based Correct Care Solutions, now known as Wellpath, in 2014.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice and Community Safety said the contract was awarded after a "careful evaluation of offers received".
"The new service model includes an increased workforce and multi-disciplinary teams to provide high quality primary health services, strengthened release planning, and significant improvements to better support the health of Aboriginal people in prisons," they said.
"The primary health service will also provide job opportunities to expand the Aboriginal health service delivery workforce."
US-based GEO Group said the contract was worth about $48 million each year.
GEO Group Australia currently operates Ravenhall prison in Melbourne's west and Fulham prison in Sale and holds other major prison contracts in Australia.
The company, which has previously delivered healthcare at Victoria's public prisons, said it would have a strong focus on integrating alcohol and drug services and better healthcare for Indigenous prisoners.
"GEO Healthcare will work in close partnership with public, private and not-for-profit providers to deliver the best possible healthcare outcomes for people in prison, with plans for ongoing post-release care and support in the community," the company said.
"All staff currently working at these service delivery sites as employees of Correct Care Australasia will be invited to join GEO Healthcare's team."
Correct Care Australasia has been contacted for comment.
Aboriginal legal group urges Victoria to stop outsourcing prison health care
The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS), which represents Veronica's partner Percy Lovett, said it was concerned staff currently employed by CCA could shift over to employment with GEO Group Australia.
VALS lawyer Sarah Schwartz accused the government of ignoring calls for change from grieving families by maintaining the status quo of outsourcing prison health care to for-profit companies.
"The Victorian government needs to completely overhaul the prison healthcare system and take it out of the hands of for-profit corporations," she said.
"For-profit corporations are not accountable to the community and have proven that they are ill-equipped to provide equivalent prison health care."
The service has urged the government to shift oversight of custodial health services from the justice department to the health department and hire Aboriginal health organisations to deliver care to Indigenous people in prison.
Many other Australian states deliver healthcare in public prisons under their health departments, including in New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania.
"We speak to clients every day who tell us about being denied access to adequate health care in prisons," Ms Schwartz said.
"They tell us about failures to deal with serious healthcare issues such as cancers and strokes."
When asked about the decision to continue to contract out prison health care, Premier Daniel Andrews said there was a "mixture of services" being delivered across the prison network.
"We take prisoner health and welfare seriously, those people are in our custody," he said.
"We want the highest quality and we want to be confident that when taxpayers are investing money … those who need those services get the highest quality regardless of the circumstances in which they access them."
