Jackson Health System won’t outsource inmate healthcare

Jackson Health System announced Thursday it is reversing course and will not out-source inmate healthcare – ending two years of planning, hearings and appeals involving a plan once considered a major initiative to turn around the struggling hospital group. Executives last year were so convinced that out-sourcing would save money that they placed the estimated $8 million savings in the budget for this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. When Jackson's new chief executive, Carlos Migoya, arrived in May, he reviewed the program, which covers 6,000 Miami-Dade County inmates. After the final bids came in earlier this week – the second set of final bids -- he decided the proposals were "notably higher" than what his team thought it would cost Jackson to perform the same service, he said Thursday.