HARTFORD — Republican Senate leaders are calling for a public informational hearing and the release of two University of Connecticut Health and Department of Correction medical reports pertaining to an inmate’s delayed cancer diagnosis, which lawmakers are calling “gross negligence.”
Senate Republican President Pro Tem Leonard Fasano of North Haven, Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, and Sen. George Logan, R-Ansonia, are calling for more details from the DOC regarding UConn Health’s Correctional Managed Health Care unit.
Wayne World, who has been in prison since 2006 following a manslaughter conviction, began to develop a rash in 2012, but his condition went untreated, according to his mother, Carrie World.
“When I would visit him, his entire body would be wrapped in gauze and he could barely walk because of the skin lesions,” she said, adding that she repeatedly contacted correction officials to request information about her son’s treatment.
Carrie World said she contacted the Correction Department more than 20 times between June 2014 and September 2015 requesting a biopsy, but it wasn’t until 2015 that one was performed. World was diagnosed with a fatal skin cancer, which by that time had spread to his lymph nodes.
“I had to fight constantly with the Department of Correction to get any information on his treatment yet his condition continued to get worse,” Carrie World said.
“I know Wayne asked again and again for care and was denied time after time. At one point, Wayne did not even receive his medication for five months.”
Legislators are saying the case shows systemic failures, noting that a 2017 state auditors report attempted to address neglect of prison inmates.
UConn’s correctional health care unit has provided inmates health services for the previous 17 years under a no-bid contract, costing as much as $100 million per year, according to lawmakers.
“The gross negligence of UConn Health’s correctional health care unit is inexcusable,” Fasano said, calling for reports from the Correction Department and UConn Health, specifically certain reports covered under attorney-client privilege.
As a lawyer, Fasano said he is well aware of the importance of the attorney-client privilege, but said it should be waived in this case.
“We need access to any and all reports that may have been completed over the last year investigating these horrendous cases that appear to amount to nothing short of torture and abuse,” he said.
To that end, the lawmakers are asking for access to reports completed by the Correction Department and an outside consultant that investigated 25 cases, including eight deaths, related to the correctional health care unit.
“This is about morals,” Fasano said.
Lawmakers also are calling for an end to the no-bid UConn Health contract and to replace it with a request for proposals process that they argue could provide a better quality of care for less money.
“For years, the state wrongly awarded this no-bid contract as a subsidy for UConn Health,” Somers said.
“With zero effective oversight and unsuccessful self-policing, the organization’s failures have allegedly caused great harm to individuals.”
“Taxpayers have been paying for an expensive contract subsidizing UConn Health, which may have failed to provide the basic standard of care and decency that every human being has a right to receive,” Logan said.
“The reported inhumane treatment of people cannot be swept under the rug. It needs a full hearing so that we can understand how our state failed to provide basic medial attention.”