Meanwhile, a nurse for Centurion told Wellington Coppess during a visit last week that he no longer had cirrhosis or hepatitis C, Lillian Coppess said in disbelief. The procedure did show that he had scar tissue, probably due to catheters he'd had to use previously, when he had trouble urinating. It wasn't until Lillian Coppess reached out to attorneys, who were able to get those records, that they learned he had not been diagnosed with cancer. For weeks they waited in agony, despite a formal request that Wellington put in to see the results, but Centurion never provided them. "When you hear those words from a specialist, you are almost sure it's cancer," Lillian Coppess said. In mid-June, Wellington Coppess was taken to this hospital, where a doctor who performed a cystoscopy seemed certain that he might have bladder cancer. Her husband, Wellington Coppess, is incarcerated in the Santa Rita unit of the state prison complex in Tucson. He's been diagnosed with hepatitis C and cirrhosis of the liver, as New Times previously reported. Most recently, he had a cancer scare. Lillian Coppess also hoped that Centurion would be different. The provider told him that "the plate" was in place, even though Torner said no plate was ever inserted into her son's foot. He's not receiving any medication for the pain, Torner said, and after looking at X-rays, a Centurion provider recently told Leonard that nothing was wrong with his foot, even though Leonard can feel a pin or bone - he's not sure what - almost poking out of his skin. He also has pain in his ankle from pins inserted when he was 17, after a car ran over his foot. Not only is he unable to urinate without a catheter, but what does come out is sometimes dark brown and foul-smelling, according to his mother. Leonard still suffers from a host of medical issues. She described an ongoing, rocky transition of health care companies at the prison. “Nothing has changed, and everything is just as lousy,” Torner said, shortly after getting off the phone with her son on Thursday night. When Centurion took over on July 1, Torner and others with family members who are sick and incarcerated in Arizona hoped that the medical care would improve. It was, by just about all accounts, doing a terrible job, which is why the Department of Corrections decided in January not to renew the state's contract with Corizon. He has had urinary problems since March, as Phoenix New Times previously reported.īack then, the for-profit company Corizon was in the final months of its contract with the Arizona Department of Corrections to provide medical care to inmates. Behavioral health services includes psychiatric and addiction services.James Leonard, who is incarcerated in Lewis Prison in Buckeye, is still peeing through a catheter, the same one he's been cleaning and reusing for a few weeks now.ĭespite his requests, Centurion, the new health care provider for the Arizona prison system, hasn't given him fresh catheters, Leonard's mother, Laurie Torner, said. The lawsuit also accuses state officials of increasing the behavioral health services contract award amount to $123 million after Centurion secured it because the cost of obtaining a $118 million performance bond was so high, it would eat into Centurion’s profits. Landers also communicated with Wells through the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp, according to the lawsuit.Ĭenturion fired both Wells and Landers in February, according to the lawsuit. They include a draft of the request for proposals sent to Wells almost two months before it was made public. However, some of the email communications were recovered from Centurion. Landers used a program that automatically wiped the emails from his computer. The company is also seeking an injunction against several TDOC and Procurement Office officials to prevent violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act.Īccording to the lawsuit, Landers sent internal TDOC communications to a home Gmail account and then forwarded them to Centurion Vice President Jeffrey Wells. No attorney for Landers is listed in court documents. An attorney for Centurion did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment from The Associated Press on Monday afternoon.
Corizon is seeking compensation for lost profits and triple damages from Centurion and Landers.
0 kommentar(er)
