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Approved in May, an agreement with a new San Benito County Jail medical services provider, Virginia-based Mediko, will be announced on Aug. 6.
Mediko will deliver medical, mental health and dental services at the jail and youth detention center.
The contract is for five years and it’s worth more than $3.5 million, with an annual increase of 3%. It was unanimously approved by the San Benito County Board of Supervisors on May 6.
Officials call it “a major investment in the health and safety of incarcerated individuals in San Benito County,” in a Sheriff’s Office press release.
For more than two decades, health care at the county jail was handled by California Forensic Medical Group—now known as Wellpath—which last year charged the county about $2.3 million for its services.
Sheriff Eric Taylor said in April that his office issued a request for proposals in February, and Mediko received the highest score.
“Most important for us is that they have a patient-first philosophy,” said Taylor. “They are dedicated to quality improvement and staff training.”
Founded in Virginia by Dr. Kaveh Ofogh, Mediko has nearly 30 years of experience and currently provides health care to 25 correctional facilities on the East Coast and in the Mid-Atlantic region. This new contract, Ofogh said, will be its first in California.
“We are the only company in the field of correctional medicine in the nation, not just California, that hasn’t had a single judgment in this highly litigious environment of correctional healthcare,” Ofogh told the Board of Supervisors on April 22. “I kept the DNA of Mediko to be medically, not financially, driven. We do not take shortcuts, and we do not provide inadequate level of staffing for our correctional facilities.”
In recent months, Taylor has spoken about the growing challenges of providing adequate medical and behavioral health services for people in custody, especially as changes in state law are expected to increase the county’s jail population.
The agreement with Mediko comes as the county faces a lawsuit filed by the mother of a jail inmate who died by suicide in 2022, the only such incident in the facility’s 31-year history, Taylor has said. The lawsuit alleges the jail has long been inadequately staffed and offers insufficient mental health and other services.
The news conference announcing the new contract with Mediko will be at 11 a.m. Aug. 8, at the county jail, 710 Flynn Road in Hollister. Taylor and Ofogh will speak, along with Probation Department Chief Ashlyn Canez and Supervisor Kollin Kosmicki.
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