Earlier this month, Mike Reese, the director of the Oregon Department of Corrections, appeared to take a hit to accountability when he dismissed two of his agency’s top health executives and engaged a consultant to undertake a thorough analysis of the state’s problematic prison health system.
The reasons for their dismissal were revealed by an examination of allegations against Chief Medical Officer Dr. Warren Roberts and his supervisor, Joe Bugher. The months-long investigation was led by attorney Jill Goldsmith, who described the subpar medical care, protracted treatment delays, and occasionally needless humiliating treatments that inmates underwent at the hands of the two men. She discovered that physicians who voiced concerns about subpar patient care faced reprisals. As reported by Ted Sickinger and Noelle Crombie of The Oregonian/OregonLive, she also pointed out other instances in which the men were untrustworthy or evasive in their responses to her probe.
The disturbing accusations made in the study, however, should not have come as a surprise to Reese or anybody with even a casual interest in the correctional department, which manages 12,000 adult offenders in 12 jails, given his brief employment there. The only unanswered question is whether Reese and Governor Tina Kotek plan to drastically change the agency’s course or simply wait out this most recent catastrophe in typical Oregon fashion.
A cursory review of the facts demonstrates why suspicion is warranted. News reports and lawsuits against the government have detailed in vivid detail the poor treatment that inmates in state prisons have allegedly received for years. A record $3.5 million was paid last year to a man who died in 2019 after a nurse mistook his heart attack symptoms for gas. The agency has paid millions in settlements.
In 2023, a state assessment found that the women’s correctional prison at Coffee Creek had significant wait times for treatment and inadequate medical services. A Chicago-based voluntary accreditation charity then released a separate study in 2024 detailing a backlog of 600 medical appointments in addition to other shortcomings in the way women were treated.
Additionally, in 2021, a judge questioned Roberts’ credibility in concluding that the agency had demonstrated deliberate indifference to the plaintiff’s health needs. Roberts had previously been the subject of an Oregon Medical Board corrective action plan for complaints before he was appointed chief medical officer. The reaction of the state? The judge was reprimanded by then-state representative Janelle Bynum, who is currently a congresswoman, for trying to remove the credentials of Black professionals like Roberts. Claiming the judge was biased, the state justice department also stated that it intended to have the judge barred from hearing any more quality-of-care cases against the correctional agency.
Indeed, the issues precede Kotek, who recently began her third year as governor, and Reese, who took over as director of corrections fifteen months ago. And give Reese credit for initially requesting a formal probe and a comprehensive analysis of the system.
However, a few of their behaviors suggest a minimization approach. For example, in the spring of 2024, Reese started the process of a justice department investigation, and in late June, Goldsmith was hired. Only a few days before Goldsmith’s final report was due in December, Reese placed Roberts and Bugher on administrative leave.
Even after learning of specific claims made by a jail physician in August of last year that patients with life-threatening illnesses had experienced unbelievable delays, he refused to place them on leave. A man whose head looked like an infected sponge of oozing pus went more than a year without receiving the correct medical attention, according to Crombie and Sickinger. Another man was found with tongue cancer after his initial symptoms were disregarded. Additionally, Reese did not put them on leave or designate a temporary replacement after receiving two briefings on the investigation’s status in September and late November.
Reese expressed his desire to go cautiously to the editorial board. “We don’t want to randomly place employees on administrative leave,” he stated. He cited the inquiry, which documented cases where healthcare professionals who voiced concerns about patient care were retaliated against by being placed on leave. He added that there were contradictory statements that needed to be resolved.
However, given the frequency of complaints, litigation history, prior reports, and first-hand accounts, more rapid action should have been taken to remove Roberts and Bugher from managing the potentially life-or-death medical care that inmates receive.
Reese met with lawmakers last month to provide an update on the correctional department, which is another confusing indication.Although lawmakers were aware of his decision to place two of his top administrators on leave six weeks prior, Crombie made no mention of it in his writing. Additionally, even though he had received the investigation the month before, he did not list the grave flaws in the jail health care system as a key concern.
Reese informed the editorial board that he would address the health care issues of the jail system in budget presentations and that lawmakers had only given him 20 minutes for an overview presentation. “I have a strong commitment to improving our health care system,” Reese stated.
The governor’s office, which also received the same doctor’s note as the prisons department, is also subject to the minimization. Kotek’s office did not release the letter until February, with major redactions that obscured some of the most upsetting details of what patients went through, despite The Oregonian/OregonLive’s mid-December request for a copy. Although no patient identification was included in the letter, the governor’s office claims that the redactions were justified by exemptions for public records.
Redactions are not necessary for exemptions, though. Information can still be released by an agency if it is in the public interest. Additionally, there is unquestionably a strong public interest in making sure the state carries out its moral and legal duty to provide basic medical care to individuals who have been remanded to its custody. Millions of dollars have been spent on settlements, including a recent $1 million deal with a plaintiff who lost his left eye’s vision less than two weeks earlier, even if the suffering of prisoners doesn’t spark enough attention. If the course is not changed, there will only be more litigation, more compensation, and ongoing skepticism about the government’s ability to handle problems.
Unfortunately, it makes sense if the public considers providing sufficient healthcare for Oregon’s inmates to be of low importance. However, it is unacceptable if people who are paid and trusted to deliver this kind of healthcare also do so.
-The Editorial Board of Oregonian/OregonLive
