Paradise Valley Hospital providing secure wing for jail inmates

There’s now a dedicated wing in a National City hospital specifically for people in local jails who need medical attention — 10 beds for now, with plans to essentially double that.

The secure area at Paradise Valley Hospital will mean centralized continuity of care, and it will free up deputies to return more quickly to the jails after taking an ailing person to receive medical care.

“Partnerships, such as this innovative collaboration with Paradise Valley Hospital, will ensure resources are prioritized where they should be: on the individual requiring critical medical care and deputies relieved from time-consuming hospital runs so they can return to where their presence is truly needed,” Sheriff Kelly Martinez said in a statement announcing the partnership.

Nearly four years ago, in 2022, a state auditor’s report found that San Diego County had the highest rate of in-custody deaths among California’s large counties.

Martinez, who has been leading the department since 2023, has made several reforms in the jails. Those include bringing in physicians to assess people during the intake process as they are booked into jail.

Sheriff’s Cmdr. Jesse Johns, who oversees detention operations, said that providing better access to care “gave us the ability to identify urgent issues earlier than ever before.”

“At times, the identification of these urgent issues can result in a hospital run for further testing or higher level of care treatment,” he said. “I believe this process has assisted us in reducing in-custody deaths since late 2023.”

The number of in-custody deaths dropped from a high of 19 in 2022 to 10 this year.

Roughly 50,000 people are booked into the local jails each year. This year, through the end of November, the Sheriff’s Office sent more than 2,600 people incarcerated in its jails to San Diego hospitals to receive a higher level of medical care than jails can provide.

Many go to the emergency room, get care and return to jail. On the occasion when the person is admitted, they will be housed in the secure wing where deputies are already staffed. That frees the deputy who drove the ailing person to the hospital to head back to the jail, where they can direct their attention to, say, running programming or distributing medications.

“Having those deputies back in the (jail) facility really helps us out a lot,” Johns said.

It’s no small matter. Jails are short-staffed, and deputies are needed inside the facilities. Plus, a run to the hospital can lead to overtime costs, including paying someone to fill in for that deputy who left. Johns said having a guard unit based at the hospital also allows the department to supervise more hospitalized incarcerated people with fewer deputies.

The county put nearly $1 million toward overhauling a wing of the hospital to create the secure area, which included demolition and renovations. Another $100,000 went to the video camera system, which includes cameras in rooms and hallways. Doors to the rooms lock from the outside.

There are 10 patient rooms to start, with plans to grow to 19 rooms. It’s not clear when the new rooms will come online.

There’s more to securing a wing than might meet the eye. “Hospitals aren’t set up for a carceral setting,” Johns said, pointing to, as an example, the presence of disposal containers for sharp items like needles in hospital rooms.

Paradise Valley Hospital provided a statement noting that its years-long strong working relationship with the Sheriff’s Office built a foundation “that made it possible to create a partnership that meets a critical need: providing a higher level of health care for individuals in custody. We have the clinical expertise and capacity to deliver that care. Together, we’ve created a practical solution that improves patient outcomes and supports law enforcement.”

As of last week, nine people had been admitted into the hospital wing.

Most of the people taken to the hospital from jail come in through the emergency room, most commonly to treat a wound, injury, illness or infection such as sepsis or cellulitis, department officials said.

The average length of stay for an incarcerated person admitted to the hospital from the local jails this year was 6½ days — some were just a day, at least one was more than 100 days.

The patients generally come from any of the jail facilities the Sheriff’s Office runs, including the women’s jail in Santee and four facilities in South County. Before the wing opened, people from the jails would be taken to several different hospitals in the region.

In cases of emergency, paramedics take patients to the nearest emergency room, and patients will stay there if they are admitted for further care. The new National City wing doesn’t change a lot for North County. People who are jailed in Vista and need outside medical attention are generally sent to a secure wing at Tri-City Medical Center, which the department also shares with the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Unless a patient is considered gravely ill, family members are not allowed to visit. However, attorneys can visit with their clients.

The department said it and hospital administrators worked with the California Department of Health Care Access and Information and other regulatory bodies “to ensure that the new unit meets all applicable medical, correctional and security standards.”