NCJ Number
86517
Date Published
1981
Length
378 pages
Annotation
This study traces the initiation and implementation of the American Medical Association's (AMA's) Jail Program as well as other efforts to improve correctional health care, and discusses the measures used to evaluate the AMA's program and the rationale behind them.
Abstract
It reviews the literature of the status of correctional health care prior to the reform movement and describes the AMA program's goals, funding, time periods, and activities. For each year of the AMA program, process and impact assessments were conducted. For each evaluation measure employed, data limitations and results are reviewed. The evaluations indicated that AMA was meeting its objectives and that the program was having some effect on attaining its long-term goal of improving correctional health care. However, results from some of the measures lacked statistical significance and cannot be seen as definitive measures of impact. Overall, the program did result in improvements in the health care delivery at most participant sites in large part because organized medicine was orchestrating the reforms. The AMA's organizational structure provided a perfect mechanism to reach local physicians, whose cooperation was crucial to program success. Footnotes and data tables are provided. Appendixes include the AMA's Standards for Health Services in Jails, study form and instructions, and over 300 references.