Prisons routinely ignore guidelines on dying inmates’ end-of-life choices

By Renuka Rayasam KFF Soundness News Brian Rigsby was lying with his right wrist shackled to a hospital bed in Montgomery Alabama when he learned he didn t have long to live It was September and Rigsby had been brought to Jackson Hospital from an Alabama state prison days earlier after complaining of pain and swelling in his abdomen Doctors detected that untreated hepatitis C had caused irreversible damage to Rigsby s liver according to his diagnostic records Rigsby decided to stop efforts to treat his illness and to decline lifesaving care a decision he made with his parents And Rigsby s mother Pamela Moser tried to get her son issued to hospice care through Alabama s anatomical furlough guidelines so that their family could manage his end-of-life care as they saw fit But there wasn t enough time for the furlough request to be considered After learning that Rigsby was on palliative care the staff at YesCare a private prison strength company that has a billion contract with the Alabama Department of Corrections explained the hospital it would stop paying for his stay and then transferred him back to Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore according to the hospital record his mom provided to KFF Robustness News Moser never saw or spoke to her son again The last day I went to see him in the hospital I was hoping he would take his last breath stated Moser a former hospice nurse That is how bad I didn t want him to go to the infirmary at the prison A week later Rigsby died of liver failure in the infirmary according to his autopsy document Pamela Moser holds a photo of her son Brian Rigsby who died while incarcerated in an Alabama state prison Tamika Moore KFF Wellbeing News TNS Pamela Moser a former hospice nurse identified out her son Brian Rigsby was terminally ill in September while he was incarcerated in Alabama He died the next month But she says she has no idea whether he spent his last days in pain or peace because prison personnel would not let her see or speak to him Tamika Moore KFF Medical News TNS Pamela Moser has photos taken by her son Brian Rigsby hanging in her home Tamika Moore KFF Vitality News TNS Pamela Moser got her dog Cece three weeks after the death of her son Brian Rigsby in the infirmary of Alabama s Staton Correctional Facility Tamika Moore KFF Physical condition News TNS Pamela Moser s son Brian Rigsby spent his final days in the infirmary of Alabama s Staton Correctional Facility where he died Tamika Moore KFF Physical condition News TNS Pamela Moser outside her home in Graysville Alabama Her son Brian Rigsby died in October in a prison infirmary Moser a former hospice nurse says she was denied a say in the care he received during his final days Tamika Moore KFF Wellness News TNS Show Caption of Pamela Moser holds a photo of her son Brian Rigsby who died while incarcerated in an Alabama state prison Tamika Moore KFF Vitality News TNS Expand Functionaries at the corrections department and YesCare did not respond to requests for comment As the country s incarcerated population ages rapidly thousands die behind bars each year For chosen researchers curative providers and families of terminally ill people in custody Rigsby s situation and Moser s frustration are familiar Incarcerated people typically have little say over the care they receive at the end of their lives That s despite a broad consensus among standards boards policymakers and fitness care providers that terminally ill people in custody should receive rehabilitation that minimizes suffering and allows them to be actively involved in care planning But such guidelines aren t binding State policies on end-of-life care vary widely and they generally give much leeway to correctional officers according to a review led by Georgia State University The development is that correctional officers and anatomical contractors make the decisions and they focus more on safeguard concerns than easing the emotional spiritual and physical pain of the dying say researchers and families People in jails and prisons often die while shackled to beds separated from loved ones and with minimal pain medication disclosed Nicole Mushero a geriatrician at Boston University s Chobanian Avedisian School of Medicine who studies and works with incarcerated patients When you re coming at this from a vitality care perspective it s kind of shocking Mushero commented Safeguard vs Autonomy Patients are often suspended or dropped from their robustness coverage including commercial insurance or Medicaid when incarcerated Jails and prisons have their own systems for providing vitality care often funded by state and local budgets and therefore aren t subject to the same oversight as other general or private systems The National Commission on Correctional Healthcare Care which accredits programs at correctional facilities across the country says terminally ill people in custody should be allowed to make decisions about healing options such as whether to accept life-sustaining care and appoint a person who can make diagnostic decisions for them Jails and prisons should also provide patients with pain medication that wouldn t otherwise be available to them allow extra visits with loved ones and consider them for curative release programs that let them receive hospice care in their communities disclosed Amy Panagopoulos vice president of accreditation at the commission That approach is often at odds with measure and safety rules of jails and prisons so facility leaders may be heavily involved in care decisions she disclosed As a development the commission plans to release updated standards this summer to provide more details on how facilities should handle end-of-life care to ensure incarcerated patients are more involved in the process Related Articles Astronaut one day artist the next How to help children explore the world of careers Even where abortion is still legal several brick-and-mortar clinics are closing American Beverage Association challenges Santa Cruz soda tax with lawsuit One-time California drug rehab mogul faces federal criminal charges One of the most of contagious diseases Bay Area wellness officers warn about achievable measles exposure State laws on clinical decision-making informed consent and individual privacy apply even to incarcerated patients noted Gregory Dober who teaches biomedical ethics and is a prison monitor with the Pennsylvania Prison Society a nonprofit that supports incarcerated patients and their families But correctional officers and their curative contractors often prioritize safety instead Dober stated The Federal Bureau of Prisons allows guards to override do-not-resuscitate orders if they interfere with the precaution and orderly operation of the institution according to the agency s person care guide This is a wildly understudied area mentioned Ben Parks who teaches therapeutic ethics at Mercy College of Ohio In the end it s all about the state control of a prisoner s life About a third of all people who died in federal custody between and had a do-not-resuscitate order according to Bureau of Prisons evidence obtained by KFF Vitality News through a Freedom of Information Act request The prison bureau s guidelines of forcing CPR on patients is cruel Parks reported CPR can break ribs and bruise organs with a low likelihood of success That is why people sign do-not-resuscitate orders refusing the cure he commented This is the inversion of the death penalty Parks explained Resuscitation against your will Cut Off From Family In addition corrections bureaucrats decide whether and when to reach out to a individual s friends or relatives commented Erin Kitt-Lewis a Penn State College of Nursing associate research professor who has studied the care of older adults in prisons As a aftermath terminally ill people in custody often can t involve their families in end-of-life care decisions That was the development for Adam Spurgeon who was incarcerated in a state prison in Tennessee his mother announced One morning in November Kathy Spurgeon got a call from hospital officers in Nashville saying her son had only hours to live she reported About a month earlier she had learned from her son that he had had heart surgery and developed an infection she announced But she didn t know much about his remedy Around noon she arrived at the hospital about a three-hour drive west of where she lives Adam died that evening Dorinda Carter communications director at the Tennessee Department of Correction declined to comment on Spurgeon s circumstance It is our program to not comment on an individual inmate s physiological care she declared in an email Kathy Spurgeon stated providers who treated Adam outside of prison were too deferential to guards And physicians who work with incarcerated patients say that can be the episode Even when terminally ill people in custody are treated at hospitals correctional officers still end up dictating the terms of care Hospital staff members often don t understand the rights of incarcerated patients and are unsure about state laws and hospital policies declared Pria Anand a neurologist who has treated incarcerated patients in hospitals The biggest complication is uncertainty she declared Correctional officers sometimes tell hospital staffers they can t contact next of kin for defense reasons or they won t tell a sufferer about discharge plans because of worries they might escape Anand disclosed And care frequently takes place within prisons which often are not equipped to handle the complexities of hospice decision-making including types of healing when to stop healing and who can make those decisions explained Laura Musselman director of communications at the Humane Prison Hospice Project which provides training and guidance to improve end-of-life care for incarcerated patients Our prison system was not designed to provide care for anyone especially not people who are chronically ill terminally ill older actively dying revealed Musselman who noted that her group s training has modules to cover all aspects of end-of-life care including grief sponsorship hands-on caregiving and paperwork Rigsby struggled with mental robustness and addiction for majority of his adult life including a stint in prison for a drug-related robbery A parole violation in landed him back in prison At Jackson Hospital Rigsby was given hydromorphone a powerful pain medication as well as the anxiety drug lorazepam Before he was transferred back to prison a nurse with YesCare one of the country s biggest prison wellbeing care providers which has been sued over substandard care assured hospital staffers he would be provided with the same level of pain medication and oxygen he had received at the hospital his curative records show But Moser declared she doesn t know whether he spent his last days in pain or peace The state wouldn t provide Moser with Rigsby s diagnostic records from the prison she announced She noted she wasn t allowed to visit her son in the infirmary and wasn t narrated why Moser called the infirmary to comfort her son before his death but staffers narrated her he couldn t make it to the phone and they couldn t take one to him she mentioned Instead Moser declared she left messages for prison functionaries to tell her son she loved him It breaks my heart that he could not talk with his mother during his last days announced Moser whose son died on Oct Two weeks later she drove to Woodstock Alabama to collect his remains from a crematorium KFF Healthcare News details editor Holly K Hacker contributed to this statement KFF Wellbeing News Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC