AWS Public Sector Blog
4 ways AWS can help states transform healthcare for incarcerated individuals
The cycle of recidivism in the US is a serious and costly problem. According to the Harvard Political Review, two out of three former prisoners are rearrested within three years of release, with more than half returning to jail. The American Action Forum calculates the total cost to society as a whopping $1.2 trillion.
Why do so many former prisoners return to jail? Two major factors contribute to the recidivism cycle: 1) lack of comprehensive medical services for incarcerated individuals, and 2) inadequate discharge planning for those leaving correctional facilities. In an attempt to close these gaps, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently enabled states to extend Medicaid coverage to eligible incarcerated individuals, with hopes of ensuring continuity of care upon release, reducing the risk of relapse, and encouraging better health management. CMS has authorized nine states to provide health coverage for prisoners before discharge, demonstrating the value of this innovative option.
While the new CMS policy is a positive step toward breaking the recidivism cycle, implementation is not straightforward—especially given compliance issues and the siloed nature of both government agencies and recordkeeping. To help states begin benefitting from this new CMS policy, Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers a suite of data storage, telehealth, analytics, and reentry services. In this post, we break down four specific areas where AWS services—and AWS Partners—can help.
Enhancing coordination of care for incarcerated individuals
Providing healthcare in correctional facilities is a difficult task further hampered by a lack of coordination among caregivers, as well as between the facilities and outside agencies. To tackle the fragmentation of healthcare services, the new CMS guidance promotes improved care coordination. Through integrated medical, behavioral, and social services, incarcerated individuals can receive more comprehensive care that better addresses their needs. This coordination can continue after release, linking data between old and new providers to reduce gaps in treatment and minimize the chances of worsening health conditions.
Several AWS solution providers offer correctional medical care solutions, electronic healthcare records, and analytics that help state agencies coordinate care across agencies and manage records securely.
- With more than 15,000 professionals caring for nearly 300,000 patients each day, Wellpath is a premier provider of localized, high-quality care to vulnerable patients in challenging clinical environments.
- NaphCare partners with local, state, and federal agencies to provide innovative healthcare, technology, and administrative solutions to complex problems within the correctional and justice systems.
- Medicalistics provides scalable, effective healthcare solutions for correctional facilities, improving care while reducing risk and providing complete compliance management.
Transforming inmates’ access to care
Telehealth and telemedicine services improve the quality and expand the breadth of healthcare provided to individuals during incarceration. Through video consultations and virtual visits, medical professionals can remotely assess an inmate’s health condition, provide consultations, and prescribe necessary medications. Telehealth also extends to mental health services, allowing inmates to receive counseling and support while in correctional facilities—a significant factor in successful reentry into society.
When choosing telehealth providers, state agencies should ensure their services are comprehensive, compliant, and reliable. AWS offers a suite of services to help.
- Providers can create their own cloud contact center with Amazon Connect, ensuring they stay HIPAA-compliant, while Amazon Chime powered video conferencing allows incarcerated individuals to talk to their providers in real-time.
- With AWS Media Services, providers can create digital content and build live and on-demand video resources.
- Providers can use Amazon Lex to build sophisticated, natural language chatbots into new and existing applications, while Amazon Pinpoint facilitates medical professionals’ use of multiple messaging channels, from text to voice.
Gaining a better picture of the health needs and trends of incarcerated populations
When it comes to serving incarcerated citizens, where are the gaps in services? And which populations need the most help? To make the potential of expanded Medicaid coverage a reality, states first need a comprehensive picture of the health needs of the incarcerated populations they serve.
AWS data analytics and population health management tools help states analyze health data, identify prevalent health conditions, and monitor health trends within correctional facilities.
- Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) enables organizations of all sizes to store and protect any amount of data.
- The Amazon Athena query service facilitates data analysis, and the cloud-based intelligence platform Amazon QuickSight delivers insights and makes predictions.
- Data can be managed in a centralized data catalog with AWS Glue and collected, filtered, and sent locally with AWS IoT Greengrass.
- For HIPAA-eligible services, AWS HealthLake offers a complete view of individual and patient population health data.
- Amazon Comprehend Medical is a natural language processing (NLP) service that extracts health data such as prescriptions, procedures, or diagnoses from medical text.
- Amazon Transcribe Medical is an automatic speech recognition (ASR) service that enables medical speech-to-text capabilities to be added to voice-enabled applications.
Supporting discharge planning and reentry
The new CMS guidance encourages correctional facilities to collaborate with community-based organizations, social workers, and other stakeholders to develop comprehensive reentry plans for incarcerated individuals that address their housing, employment, and healthcare needs. This coordination reduces the likelihood of relapse and hospitalization.
AWS solution providers harness innovative technology to identify community resources pre-release and provide for assistive supervision solutions that successfully comply with conditions of release.
- Tyler Technologies provides services, jobs, and resources to help incarcerated individuals achieve successful reentry.
- Acivilate is an enterprise software company with social-justice solutions such as PokketSM, which helps returning citizens, service providers, and correctional supervision work together to improve outcomes and reduce recidivism.
- eHawk Solutions is a criminal justice technology company dedicated to reducing recidivism and improving outcomes through its innovative RePath platform. RePath is a comprehensive software solution that reduces costs, reduces friction, and increases accountability in pre-trial and post-trial supervision.
Reduced recidivism brings multiple benefits to states
Study after study has shown that access to healthcare significantly reduces the chances of individual reincarceration. Besides benefiting incarcerated people, reducing the recidivism trend also confers many other benefits to states. First, by addressing medical and behavioral health issues early on, the risk of infectious diseases and substance abuse epidemics can be significantly mitigated. Second, it can lead to long-term cost savings for states—by reducing recidivism rates, crime, and hospitalization costs, the overall burden on public resources diminishes.
The 2023 CMS guidance takes a big step toward breaking the cycle of recidivism by making it easier to serve individuals who are incarcerated—and AWS offers a full range of services to facilitate implementation of this guidance at every stage. To find out more about how AWS Cloud resources are helping deliver better outcomes, visit our state and local government homepage.