The closure of Heights University Hospital is costing Hudson County money on corrections officers and overtime as they accompany inmates for medical treatment for hours at a time to the at-capacity Jersey City Medical Center, officials said last week.
By Dan Israel/Hudson County View
At last Tuesday’s caucus meeting for the Hudson County Board of Commissioners, Commissioner Bill O’Dea (D-2) prompted the conversation after noticing an unrelated agenda item for a contract with the Jersey City Medical Center (JCMC).
Hudson County Corrections and Rehabilitation Center (HCCRC) Director Becky Scott told O’Dea in response to his inquires that there is no contract with JCMC or any other local hospital to specifically treat county inmates.
“Once he clears emergencies and he’s admitted, he’s billed. We don’t have a contract for a specific bed or space,” she explained.
Scott confirmed to O’Dea that the inmate’s Medicaid insurance is charged when billed for the hospital stay, telling him and Commissioner Al Cifelli (D-9) she would have more related details at the board’s next Public Safety Committee meeting.
O’Dea requested that a representative from JCMC attend that meeting as well.
According to Scott, when inmates are hospitalized from HCCRC, they are treated like any other patient in all medical decisions.
“Once the hospital determines they’ve met his level of care in the emergency room, they can return back to us if we can accommodate whatever his medical issues are,” she said.
“If not, they go the same route they would to a public citizen when they make the determination of emergency room care to an admission. It’s the same, it’s no different criteria for a public citizen or an inmate.”
This was news to O’Dea, who was subsequently informed by Scott that there is no secure unit for HCCRC inmates at JCMC, or any other hospital in Hudson County for that matter.
“So what do we do, just send officers there any time we send them to the facility?,” O’Dea asked, to which Scott responded with a simple “Yes.”
This piqued O’Dea’s interest, considering the financial impact this has on the county.
Scott agreed to produce a report for O’Dea from 2025 on how many times that occurred, how many officers were used, and for how many hours, among other relevant details.
Following that, O’Dea pointed to lengthy wait times at the JCMC Emergency Department (ED) in the wake of the Heights University Hospital closure last month as sufficient reason for the county to find another solution to their current scenario.
“Here’s my concern now, the Jersey City Medical Center emergency room is above capacity,” O’Dea said.
“I’ve received calls in the last 10 days of six-hour waits. People waiting six hours to see someone in an emergency room, especially certain days and times. That means, just to see someone, we have to send an officer to a facility to sit in an emergency room. It’s crazy.”
According to O’Dea, the county is paying for officers’ overtime in some cases, sparking questions if another option – perhaps a dedicated secure unit – would cost less as the JCMC ED reaches capacity amid the healthcare desert developing in the city.
“I think we need to look into that because with the closing of Christ Hospital, there’s a crisis,” O’Dea said.
“Doctors have complained. There was a doctor who said he had 80 people waiting to see him last week from the emergency room. That’s crazy. And one them or two of them are inmates, that means there’s officers there outside for six hours that we’re paying and then having to bring someone else in or paying overtime.”
Board Chair Anthony Romano (D-5) noted that this the county has been pursuing a dedicated secure unit to treat HCCRC patients at a hospital in Hudson County for some time, but keeps running into roadblocks.
“We’ve been frustrated also with the administration trying to get one of the hospitals to give us a secured area, so we don’t have that overtime issue. If I’m not mistaken, there was sometimes there was somebody being guarded for a year … which, it’s frustrating.”
Romano stated that the county came close to getting their secure unit in Secaucus, Hoboken, or Jersey City, but HRH fell through on their promises in all of those instances.
“We thought we came close with Hudson Regional Hospital. There was also a promise when they were going to redo Hoboken and Christ that was going to take place,” he recalled.
While Romano was told the negotiations were no longer ongoing with HRH for any of their facilities, O’Dea said the county shouldn’t “be negotiating with them right now” anyway given their improper and illegal closure of Heights hospital.
“I would negotiate with the state to start fining them every day,” O’Dea exclaimed.
In addition, when JCMC was originally built, plans to house the secure unit there were “all spec-ed out,” however that fell through and officials confirmed to Romano that “they’re not interested” in the idea any longer.
Outside of Hudson County, there was also a contract with East Orange Hospital to have the secure unit there, but that was before it closed, Cifelli noted, causing Romano to remark that’s why the county is stuck right now.
However, O’Dea remained steadfast that the county needs to find an alternative to the current untenable procedure.
“We need to come up with something. I think they just let them wait there and stay there, and they don’t care how long they’re there,” he declared.
While officials debated diverting inmate patients to different hospitals, it was clarified that hospitals make the determination to divert patients themselves through the chief medical officer.
Further, the transporting ambulance leaving HCCRC would already be aware of this and the hospital wouldn’t advise officers to bring the inmate to another hospital if they are not diverting but have long wait times at the ED.
Romano noted that JCMC usually diverts to Hoboken University Hospital when necessary, while O’Dea recalled a recent trip to Bayonne University Hospital and the quick wait time at the ED there in comparison.
“If we know that there’s a crisis in the emergency room at the medical center during certain times … wouldn’t it be smart of us, since we’re paying someone to be with them for all the time that they’re there, to create an alternative for them to go?” O’Dea suggested.
“There were 80 people waiting for a doctor. You think the doctor would come out and go, ‘Hey, I think some of you folks might want to go to another hospital?’”
The board did not take any formal action on the matter last week.
