The Rio Arriba County Jail purchased tens of thousands of doses of Seroquel and Xanax to sedate inmates between 2004 and 2008, a Rio Grande SUN investigation found.
But Rio Arriba was not alone in prescribing these drugs to jail inmates, according to a state Health Policy Commission document.
In 2008, Sen. Richard Martinez (D-Española) sponsored Senate Memorial 48, asking the Governor’s Health Policy Commission to assess the cost of health care for county jail inmates in New Mexico.
In June 2008, the Commission created a Task Force and asked each of New Mexico’s 33 counties to fill out a lengthy online County Inmate Health Provider Reimbursement Survey, detailing jail medical costs.
Most counties, including Rio Arriba County, did not disclose their jail’s top five most-prescribed medications when responding to the Commission survey, according to a document detailing answers to the Commission survey.
But of the 12 county jails that did provide this information, half reported Seroquel or Xanax as their first- or second-most prescribed drugs for inmates.
“Seroquel is abused in prisons in general,” state Pharmacy Board Director Bill Harvey said. “Our consultant pharmacists say it represents a big part of budgets in different correctional and detention facilities. The Las Vegas state psychiatric hospital complained that atypical anti-psychotic drugs like Seroquel represent half of their drug budgets.”
The Otero County Jail in Alamogordo reported “psychotropic” drugs as its top five most-prescribed medications.
Grant County Jail in Silver City reported Hydrocodone, a highly-addictive opiate, to be its top-prescribed drug for inmates, and Depakote, a sedating anti-seizure drug, to be its second most-prescribed medication.
“Psychotropic drugs are climbing statewide,” Task Force Co-Chair Rhonda Burrows said. “It’s Bernalillo County’s number one reportable cost.”
The San Miguel County Jail in Las Vegas and the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center each reported Seroquel as their top-prescribed drug.
Bernalillo jail’s top four most-prescribed drugs — Seroquel, Risperdal, Zyprexa and Geodon — were all anti-schizophrenia drugs that can be used to sedate patients, the Commission survey shows. However, it is unclear that the Bernalillo jail is using these drugs off-label to sedate inmates. Unlike the Rio Arriba County Jail, which has few schizophrenic inmates, Bernalillo jail identified schizophrenia as its number one psychiatric diagnosis, according to the Commission survey results.
San Miguel County Jail reported that 65 percent of its health care budget goes to prescription drugs.
“They were using a lot of Seroquel but in the past six months they dropped off a lot,” Health Care Partners Purchasing Officer Jenny Maestas said of the San Miguel County Jail’s prescriptions.
Health Care Partners has a contract with San Miguel County to provide inmate medical care.
“We found that they don’t really need the Seroquel,” Maestas said.
Maestas would not offer additional details and referred questions to Health Care Partners Manager Rita Torrez. Torrez confirmed that psychiatric drugs were a major expense at the jail until last year, and said Monday she would call back with details about the reductions in Seroquel purchases. But Torrez did not call back with that information.
Rio Arriba County failed to complete the Commission questionnaire even though the Commission Task Force included Sen. Martinez, who sponsored the study, and Nick Abeyta of Rio Drugs of Chama — whose pharmacy sold the County Jail $140,000 of Seroquel between 2004 and 2008. (County Clerk Moises Morales was also a Health Policy commissioner at the time.)
“Not all counties collect data like that,” Task Force Co-Chair Rhonda Burrows said. “Especially the smaller ones. That’s one of the problems with these kinds of studies.”
This story required a correction: In the final paragraph of this article, a quote had been attributed to Task Force Co-Chair Richard Burrows. The Co-Chair’s name is Rhonda Burrows, not Richard.