MANSFIELD — Richland County Jail officials plan to use biometric monitors to provide real-time medical updates on high-risk inmates.
The Richland County Board of Commissioners on Thursday approved a request to contract for one year with a 4Sight Labs, a San Francisco-based company, at a cost of about $41,000 for its Overwatch program.
Richland County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Chris Blunk, administrator of the 234-bed county jail, said wrist monitors will be placed on inmates deemed to be at-risk by the jail’s medical staff.
Blunk said the monitors will provide real-time data on vital signs such as heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and skin temperature, alerting staff to potential emergencies, allowing for prompt medical attention and potentially saving lives.
He said he hopes to have the program up and running by the end of 2024. The initial cost includes equipment, set-up and training. The annual cost to continue the effort after that first year would be $24,000, Blunk said.
“This is just a tool to be used to help us in our efforts to maintain safety and security for our inmates,” Blunk told commissioners during a meeting also attended by Sheriff Steve Sheldon.
“It does not take the place of anything else,” Blunk said, adding he believes the local county jail will be the first in Ohio to use the technology with the California company that launched in 2020.
“They started out west and they are moving east. I really like the aspects of this. I think it will be extremely beneficial to what we are doing to provide adequate medical care to the inmates at the jail,” Blunk said.
Money for the program will come from commissions on the inmates’ commissary accounts, funded by things like snack purchases, phone calls, video visits and video messaging, Blunk said.
“(The funds) will be used for the treatment of inmates,” he said.
The wi-fi based program will start with 10 wrist monitors and two routers in the jail. Parameters can be set that will send alerts to monitors carried by on-duty medical staff, as well as desk-top computers used by jail staff.
He said the wrist monitors are difficult for inmates to tamper with and that an alarm would be triggered should one be damaged or broken.
There were two deaths at the jail earlier this year, both involving inmates who had previous issues with drug abuse before coming into the facility.
“We are experiencing sicker individuals as the years go by. I have looked for many ways to help us in our endeavors to get people treated and cared for and make sure we’re doing our due diligence,” Blunk said.
Blunk said changes in jail intake policy in the last six months include a more in-depth questionnaire for inmates.
“Depending on their answers to those questions and even what the corrections officer sees, they can have the medical staff come over and do an immediate medical screening right there, which is a little bit more in-depth than our 25 questions,” he said.
He said the jail medical staff also now does a screening appraisal of all inmates within 12 hours of their arrival at the jail, or before they are moved into the jail’s general population, rather than 14 days as was the previous standard.
Commissioner Cliff Mears asked if the program could be expanded beyond 10 monitors.
“Since we’ve done the critical care inmate (screening) and we’re tracking them, we’ve never had more than six critical care inmates at a time,” he said.
“So I think 10 will suffice. Currently, today, we have two. So I think (10) will be sufficient,” Blunk said. “If not, we will look at, down the road, where we need to go with it.
“It’s a one-year contract. We will see how it works and assess it,” he said.
Commissioner Tony Vero praised the idea.
“Anytime we can add an extra layer of protection for the health of individuals in our jail, I think it’s a good thing and it’s being paid for out of monies to be used for such a purpose.
“Why wouldn’t we want an extra layer of protection for people that are in our jail?” Vero asked.
Blunk said he learned of the 4Sight Labs Overwatch program through the company providing health care services to the county jail. The RCSO signed a one-year, $700,590 contract with Southern Health Partners in March to provide care in the jail.
That decision came after Sheldon and Blunk in January said they had hoped to sign a contract that would provide an “enhanced option” in the department’s next jail medical services contract, including the addition of a second Licensed Practical Nurse at the jail 24/7 (including holidays) and a “very comprehensive (drug/alcohol) treatment program” for inmates.
The cost of those enhanced services would have resulted in an annual contract of between $1.1 and $1.8 million, they said, ultimately deciding the cost was prohibitive.
Sheldon said Thursday he has not given up on the idea of the enhanced services and is currently seeking a $900,000, three-year state grant that would help fund a “medication-assisted” treatment program in the jail.
“I think we’re always trying to improve in any way that we can,” the sheriff said.
Commissioners approve new employee policy manual
Commissioners on Thursday also approved a new 200-page employee policy manual for workers in departments they oversee.
The new manual replaces one first developed in 1984, according to Kelly Christiansen, the county’s human resources director. It was a project she and county administrator Andrew Keller worked on together over a period of months.
“This was a bear of a project,” said Christiansen, who has worked for the county for 37 years. “We did our best to come up with something that will be helpful moving forward and presented it to (commissioners) for review and adoption.”
Primary changes to the manual involve matching local policies to those found in the Ohio Revised Code and also federal law, Keller said.
The policy manual will be offered to other county elected officials to access and/or adopt to their own offices, commissioners said.
(Below is a PDF of the new personnel policy manual adopted Thursday by the Richland County Board of Commissioners.)
