Effective Management of Long-term Conditions in Remand Prisons: exploring treatment decisions in the first month of imprisonment
Clinical Research Director for the Transform Research Alliance, Dr Nat Wright, and other members of staff at Spectrum Community Health CIC have published a report pertaining to the management of long-term conditions in remand prisons.
This research project entailed extracting data from the records of 1,126 prisoners across four prisons, of which 78% were male, 61% were from a white ethnic background and 46% were sentenced. This was supplemented by 19 qualitative interviews with staff members. Seventeen percent of the sample had at least one long-term condition, the most common condition being asthma, confirmed in 12% of the sample. The confirmed prevalence rates for the other long-term conditions were hypertension 3%, coronary heart disease 2%, diabetes 2% and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease 1%. The prevalence of epilepsy was 3%. There was considerable variability between prisons regarding prevalence of “epilepsy”, the likely reason being differences in coding practice for patients with either pseudo seizures or alcohol withdrawal seizures. Having a long-term condition was associated with female gender and increasing age. QOF completion rates varied between long-term conditions and were highest for asthma with a 40% completion rate, and lowest for diabetes with an 8% completion rate.
