Massachusetts declines to renew contract with controversial prison health care company Wellpath

Instead, the department awarded a new five-year contract worth about $770 million to VitalCore Health Strategies to provide health care services to the roughly 6,000 people incarcerated in the state’s 10 correctional facilities. The Topeka, Kan.-based for-profit currently serves 80,000 incarcerated individuals in 136 facilities across 17 states.

“In correctional settings, the success of the rehabilitative mission relies on a system’s ability to provide quality and compassionate care,” Terrence Reidy, secretary of Public Safety and Security, said in a press release announcing the decision. “The Massachusetts Department of Correction’s new partnership with VitalCore reflects their deep commitment to delivering holistic healthcare to incarcerated individuals.”

The decision follows a concerted lobbying campaign by prisoner-rights advocates and the state’s two US senators, who spent much of the bidding period highlighting Wellpath’s troubling record. Critics have accused the company of, among other things, outright denials of care and inappropriate use of restraints and solitary confinement for people with mental health needs.

The lobbying campaign included a rally outside the State House during which former prisoners shared their stories and accused Wellpath LLC, owned by the private equity firm H.I.G., of denying them needed care. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, meanwhile, wrote a pair of letters to Wellpath demanding the company respond to accusations that it was putting profits before prisoners.

Wellpath declined a request for comment on Friday. And VitalCore Health Strategies CEO Viola Riggin declined a request for an interview. In a statement issued to the press, she suggested her company would do a better job.

“Our mission is to prioritize the dignity and health of all under custodial care by delivering the highest standards of quality medical and behavioral health care, guided by evidence-based and trauma-informed best practices that result in positive clinical experiences for incarcerated patients,” she wrote. “We share the same goals as the DOC to provide quality patient care, and we will demonstrate our passion for this work in our daily services.”

For now, some of Wellpath’s critics seemed inclined to give their replacement the benefit of the doubt.

“This new contractor selection reflects the Healey administration’s commitment to improve health care for people in state custody,” Warren said in a statement. “I’ll continue to monitor the performance of this new provider to ensure accountability.”

But some prisoner rights advocates were less enthusiastic.

“We hope that VitalCore can fill some of the critical gaps that we have seen under Wellpath, including delays in care, difficulty accessing off-site specialists, and chronic understaffing,” said Michael Horrell, director of the Healthcare and Disability Project at Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts. “But as long as we continue providing health care behind prison walls separate from integrated systems of care in the broader community, we will likely continue to see poor health outcomes for our aging incarcerated population.”

Marc Stern, an expert on prison health care and a professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health, said Wellpath and VitalCore are “more alike than they are different.”

“They’re all for-profits, which means their primary obligation is to shareholders,” said Stern, a correctional physician, whose former posts include regional medical director for the New York State Department of Corrections, and medical director for the Washington State Department of Corrections. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t care about patients, but they have an obligation to their shareholders.”

Wellpath’s tenure was marred by controversy. In November 2020, after documenting problems at prisons around the state, the state’s US attorney and the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division accused the Department of Correction and Wellpath of exposing prisoners experiencing a mental health crisis “to conditions that harm them or place them at serious risk of harm.”

Reports from disability and prisoner advocates followed. In one survey of inmates in Massachusetts, 79 percent of respondents said they had a medical condition ignored by the staff and 80 percent complained of delayed care. In March, the Disability Law Center issued a report highlighting problems at Bridgewater State Hospital, the Department of Correction’s mental health hospital. Patients there, it said, experienced routine violence, were forced to breathe air contaminated with mold, and were illegally subjected to forced injections as a form of restraint.

Whether the quality of care improves under the new company will depend both on how the contract is written and the level of commitment those tapped to lead VitalCore’s efforts in Massachusetts feel toward the prisoners under their care, Stern said. Though data is limited, studies suggest that the amount of money allocated by states to pay for prison health care is less than would be paid out by Medicaid, “which is not the Cadillac of health care by any means,” said Stern. The profits taken by private contractors further reduce the pie.

VitalCore, which has approximately 2,200 employees and annual revenues of approximately $300 million, also has a troubled record.

In 2021, Disability Rights Mississippi filed a federal lawsuit against VitalCore, the Department of Corrections and its commissioner, Burl Cain, on behalf of 31 incarcerated men and women in the state’s prisons alleging they had been denied treatment, medication, and medical equipment

Polly Tribble, executive director of Disability Rights Mississippi, said some patients were denied needed psychiatric medications and cited the case of a prisoner with an amputation who was denied care when the stump of his amputated leg became infected and he could no longer use his prosthetic leg.

A separate Delaware lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union alleges that the state’s former health services provider, Centene, hired unlicensed individuals to serve as nurses and deliberately understaffed the system to increase the profitability of its contract with the state. It accuses VitalCore, which took over, of failing to fix those problems.

“We acknowledge that we have gone into two states with pending litigation and are assisting them mitigating those issues,” Riggin said in a statement to the Globe.

Friday’s announcement follows a lengthy bidding process that began after the initial request for proposals was issued in November 2023. Initially, seven companies informed the state of their intent to bid on the contract, according to a public records request submitted by Prisoners’ Legal Services of Massachusetts, a nonprofit advocacy group. In the end, only three chose to do so: Wellpath, VitalCore, and Centurion, another for-profit company based in Virginia.

Adam Piore can be reached at adam.piore@globe.com.