Getting meds in jail is not easy. Unlike prisons, which have their own sort of orderly society, jails don’t usually make accommodations for people who may only be there for a few days (or weeks or months) while awaiting bail or trial, or serving some short sentence
If the person has medicine in a prescription bottle with them at the time of arrest, they will probably be able to get the medicine doled out to them according to the script.
But most people don’t carry their medicines on them. In those cases, oftentimes a person has not to be showing actual symptoms of some medical distress before they’ll get medical treatment.
The jails do usually have medical wards, for chronically sick inmates, but there’s also the concern about malingering, so the first instance of an inmate complaining about being sick is often ignored.
For a person who takes medication, and doesn’t have it with them, the best thing that I’ve found is for somebody to bring their prescription bottles to the jail. The jail won’t take the bottles, but they will write down the scripts and then fill them on their own.
The prison. At least in my state (WI) and in the federal prison systems. But it would NOT be cost-effective to expect inmates to pay for them. Most will then refuse the meds (including vital stuff like insulin, nitroglycerin pills, and many others), and in many cases end up in ERs and hospitals with severe asthma attacks or diabetic ketoacidosis, or MIs etc. etc. Much cheaper to give the meds which reduce the risk of such disease complications.
Nope nope nope. If a person needs an anti-coagulant or anti-platelet agent to minimize risk of emboli, strokes, MI, or other forms of severe morbidity/mortality, we’ll keep 'em on the med. I serve the patient’s legitimate medical needs within the constraints of the system; I don’t look for ways to save the state bucks if it is to the detriment of the patient.
On the other hand, I have no desire to provide unnecessary or futile care either. That applies to both inmates and in the real world.
Our corrections system (23K inmates) had a respiratory therapist who supplied needed equipment, set up and monitored all CPAP use throughout the system once it had been prescribed. Inmates have to meet the same requirements as medicare patients: Use it at least 4 hours 7 days out of 10 or lose it. If it’s used less than that, there’s no good evidence of therapeutic benefit from the device.
If we physicians/NPs suspected sleep apnea, we could arrange for sleep studies to be done within the prisons; generally there was no need to go to a sleep lab for most cases.
But if we had records of a previous abnormal sleep study, we’d not need to repeat it; we’d just order CPAP (or APAP etc) based on the old studies, unless things had changed significantly.
CPAP devices were popular requests due to generally needing a low bunk for electrical connections. Inmates like low bunks, but only half of them can have one.
CPAP device parts can also be used to make lots of illicit stuff, from tattoo devices to filtering/distilling equipment to weapons. It’s a headache to try to ensure proper use where it’s needed, but we still tried our best.
They probably would give you your Cialis, if you were using it for primary pulmonary hypertension. These meds are dosed TID (3 times a day) when used for that purpose.
As an aside, it never ceases to amaze me how inventive prisoners can be with minimal materials. And, presumably, these are not particularly well educated people.
From a police perspective it all gets pushed to the jail personnel. The jail has a nurse on duty at all times. Some are good. Some don’t seem to want to be bothered. A lot of arrestees have complaints. It’s not up to us to evaluate them. If they have acute complaints such as chest pains due to incarceritis. In that case we would bring them to the emergency room. If they are released we bring the discharge instructions to the jail. For chronic issues we just inform the jail and the nurse does a screening. Sometimes they will not except the prisoner and require us to take them to the hospital for a medical clearance. Most of the time they do accept them and then it’s up to them to handle medications.
Since they changed the requirements for bail there are a lot fewer people in jail so it doesn’t come up as much.
Again, I think it depends on the facility. I’ve heard of health insurance being billed if they had it, and if they didn’t, they still got their meds at the jail’s expense.