COLUMBIA -- Sometime this fall, inmates at Perry Correctional Institution who have mental health disorders will visit a room inside the Greenville County prison and talk to their Columbia-based doctor via a television screen.

The telemedicine project comes a year after three unidentified inmates and an advocacy group filed suit against the state's prison system, alleging the state had failed to adequately treat mentally ill inmates.

But whether the telemedicine project offers something more than cost savings for a prison system that already spends among the least in the nation to care for prisoners depends on who you talk to.

"We think it's going to be hugely successful," said Russell Campbell, director of health services for the prison system, "not only in terms of reducing transportation costs, but we think it's going to add to the quality of what we do, because physicians will be able to maximize their time."

Advertisement

Dave Almeida, executive director for the South Carolina chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said while expanding access to mental health care is a good thing, telemedicine is not a substitute for face- to-face care.

"Unless you're a TV anchor talking to a camera, it's not something that comes naturally," he said. "Telemedicine should be considered if and only if the bottom line is that there is no other way to get people the help they need. It's a start. It's not a substitute."

Sen. Ralph Anderson, a Greenville Democrat and a member of the Senate Corrections Committee for 10 years, said he thinks the telemedicine project is just another attempt to reduce costs in a system already cut to the bone.

He said health care in the prisons is "the world's worst." He said he regularly receives complaint letters from prisoners' families.

"I just pray we're able to get the U.S. Justice Department to come in and look at things," he said.

At least 10 percent of the prison's system's 23,000 inmates are mentally ill, officials say, a greater percentage than in the general population outside prison walls.

The illnesses range from anxieties to psychosis requiring hospitalization.

The agency has 31/2 staff psychiatrist positions.

The telemedicine project will allow the system to use those psychiatrists' time more effectively, officials say, augmented by doctors from the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, which is working with the prison system on the project and providing some of the equipment.

John P. Solomon, director of mental health services for the prison system, said using the television monitors will keep psychiatrists from traveling to Perry from Columbia, a two-hour drive each way.

"That's four hours gone when a psychiatrist could be seeing other patients," he said.

"Rather than having inmates brought, we're not tying up vehicles or officers to bring people down the road. And we're saving money in gasoline and officer productivity because they can be doing other things at the institution."

He said the cameras can also help in emergency situations, helping inmates and doctors connect more quickly.

Campbell said the project is not an attempt to provide cheap medicine. Treating the system's inmates before they are released is a significant public safety issue, he said.

"Sometimes it's lost on people that there is a nexus between public safety and public health," he said. "Because 90 percent or more of the people currently incarcerated are going to get out. They are going to go back to your community and my community. If we can treat those with mental health issues and make them productive, taxpaying citizens, we all benefit."

The agency spends about $55 million on health care each year, he said, $6 million of it on mental health.

Perry, with a population of 951, has more than 200 inmates with mental illness, officials said. The prison is one of three in the system that house inmates that need to be seen regularly by mental health professionals, Solomon said.

The prisons are in addition to the 87-bed psychiatric hospital the system operates in Columbia and a 200-bed intermediate-care facility there.

Campbell said the agency has not been able to recruit a psychiatrist to work at Perry, making the telemedicine project even more helpful.

The prison is already wired for telecommunication, which is used regularly for parole hearings, in which inmates talk to the parole board without ever leaving their prisons.

Officials hope to expand the telemedicine project to two other men's prisons and to the women's prison in Greenwood, Campbell said. Officials also are considering the use of the cameras for physical examinations. Campbell said Arizona already uses such a system to diagnose inmates there.

But for now, officials hope it can offer help systemwide with mental illness.

"This will make psychiatric treatment and evaluation more readily available to inmates around the state, we hope," said Jon Ozmint, director of the prison system.