COMPUTERS SOUGHT FOR JAIL HOSPITAL.

Byline: Douglas Haberman Daily News Staff Writer

Trying to improve medical and mental health care for county jail inmates, the Sheriff's Department wants to buy a $20 million jail hospital computer package.

The computerization plan was hastened after a blistering U.S. Department of Justice report found that mentally ill inmates in county jails received such poor treatment it fell ``below constitutional minimum standards.''

The federal report released in September said mentally ill inmates were often lost in the jail system, misclassified or placed in unsafe housing in addition to being targets of physical and mental abuse by other inmates and custody staff.

A five-year contract with Cerner Corp. for the computerized hardware and software package will come before the Board of Supervisors for a vote Aug. 11.

The jail hospital information system is a critical part of plans to computerize the Sheriff's Department custody records system, Undersheriff Jerry Harper said Friday.

``Right now, the system we have is manual,'' he said. ``We really need to be able to move that information electronically.''

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who oversees the Sheriff's Department for the board, supports the Cerner contract, aide Lori Howard said. ``One of the things that the Department of Justice said was our tracking system of mental health inmates needs to be improved,'' she said.

One problem has been making sure inmates' records keep up with them as they are transferred from one of 12 county jails to another, said Cmdr. Jerry Skaggs of the Custody Division.

``Their medical records don't necessarily follow them,'' he said. With computerization ``we'll have instant access'' to the records.

``The first thing we can hope for is timeliness in providing medication,'' said Capt. John Anderson, commander of the Twin Towers Correctional Facility downtown, where almost all mentally ill inmates - between 1,500 and 2,000 - are housed in a special section. A total of roughly 5,100 inmates a day require some medical attention, and keeping track of inmates' prescriptions can be difficult under the current system, he said.

Automation of the custody system would involve the use of inmate wristbands bearing bar codes like those used on supermarket items, Skaggs said. Medical staff in the jails would be able to scan the wristbands and immediately look up patient information on computers and enter new data - such as medications administered.

Funding for the computerization package would come from an inmate welfare fund generated by proceeds from jail concessions, commissaries and calls made on the jails' 3,700 telephones, sheriff's officials said.