Should We Be Worried About Washoe County’s Expanding Partnership with NaphCare Facing Multiple Jail Neglect Lawsuits?

A recap of our recent reporting plus bonus content.

Apr 25, 2025

Several press releases recently announced an evolving partnership between the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office and its “correctional healthcare partner,” the for profit Alabama-based NaphCare, which has faced more and more unwanted media attention due to multiple lawsuits it’s facing and has lost related to inmate neglect.

Increasingly, counties contract private companies to coordinate health care at jails. With more scrutiny, these companies are facing mounting accusations of trying to boost profits by cutting costs and understaffing.

A recent study indicates that jails which provide health care with private companies such as NaphCare have death rates up to 58 percent higher than jails which still rely on public management of their medical services. In one jail death data examination by the news agency Reuters, NaphCare rated the worst.

Deaths are already a well reported and recurring problem at the Washoe County jail such as one inmate who was booked in July 2024, taken to a local hospital in November and then died this February in hospice care.

The New Yorker recently investigated the case of a woman in her 60s, who also died in hospice care, after prolonged starvation during her four month stay at a Tucson jail where NaphCare also provides medical services.

The Investigative Reporting Lab at Yale indicates “she was arrested on April 30, 2022, when a commercial security guard called the police to remove her from a parking lot. The police had an outstanding arrest warrant … for failure to register her address, and she was booked into the Pima County Jail.”

In another NaphCare related case, a jury in Washington this month found the company must pay a former inmate $25 million for negligence after missing signs of a severe blood clot in 2018 resulting in the amputation of his leg.

The Seattle-based law firm Budge & Heist has been at the forefront of some of these lawsuits against NaphCare. In yet another recent case, their lawyers represented the family of a 55-year-old who died of a ruptured intestine while awaiting trial in Spokane, for which $27 million dollars in damages was awarded.

An article on the Appeal website in 2023 indicated Naphcare had at that time already been sued more than 100 times for malpractice and neglect.

Concerning our county’s own contracts with the for profit, Bethany Drysdale wrote back to us pointing us to Agenda 18 at a meeting last summer which passed unanimously.

It was to award “inmate medical services for the Washoe County Detention Facility to the highest scoring bidder NaphCare, Inc. in the amount of [$13,502,694.24] for year 1, and [$14,177,828.88] for year 2 and 2) approve the use of General Fund Contingency in an amount up to but not to exceed [$1,300,000] to increase expenditure authority within the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office departmental budget for detention medical services for unbudgeted expenditures for Fiscal Year 2025 in accordance with Nevada Revised Statute (NRS) 354.598005 and; if approved, retroactively authorize the Purchasing and Contracts Manager to execute a two-year agreement, July 1, 2024, through June 30, 2026, with the option to renew for two (2) additional two (2) year periods at the sole discretion of the County and direct the Comptroller’s Office to make the necessary budget appropriation transfers as needed.”

Do you think this is money well spent or should we have concern?