Has The Inhumane And Costly Massachusetts Prison Health Care System Improved Under New Management?

Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ)
Eliza Dewey
July 10, 2025

James Ware first learned about the nodule on his lung three years ago. He had been sent from the Massachusetts Correctional Institution (MCI) in Shirley to Shattuck Hospital in Boston to get imaging for another medical issue; the test just happened to capture an image of the spot.

Ware didn’t get a diagnosis until he finally had a biopsy this February, after years of being shuffled back and forth between the prison and local hospitals for periodic imaging tests. By that time, the news was devastating: Stage 4 lung cancer. 

The post-appointment medical report, which Ware’s attorney provided, was blunt: “He has likely been living with his lung cancer for years and has had inadequate follow-up and surveillance. In this setting, he now has advanced disease and is not a candidate for any local therapy.”

For the majority of those years wasted on delayed care, Ware’s health care—like that of all Massachusetts prisoners—was in the hands of a company called Wellpath. The private-equity-owned behemoth has been a major player in the multi-billion-dollar correctional care industry. But last year, Massachusetts declined to renew the contract as Wellpath attracted increasing controversy. The company was hit with more than 1,500 lawsuits nationwide for alleged medical negligence or wrongful death of inmates, and Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey had scrutinized the vendor over reports of poor care in the commonwealth. Wellpath later filed for bankruptcy.

Last summer, Massachusetts opted for a new prison health care vendor, the Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies. For Ware, the transition meant that for eight months between last July and his biopsy in February, VitalCore repeated the same pattern as its problematic predecessor.

“It doesn’t matter which one it was, either Wellpath or these new people [VitalCore],” Ware told me on a phone call this spring. “What they like to do is delay, delay, delay, delay, delay and hope that you don’t complain.”

I spent the past year examining VitalCore’s performance thus far in Massachusetts to gauge how much of a difference the switching of companies made for the state’s prison health care system, if any. Through analysis of public records and interviews and correspondence with more than two dozen sources—incarcerated people, recently released prisoners, attorneys, and former VitalCore staff—it appears that, a year into its five-year, $770 million contract, VitalCore has struggled to improve significantly in several critical areas including: 

  • Staffing levels
  • Mental health care
  • Workplace culture
  • Specialty care and follow-up appointments
  • Medical record keeping 

Read more at: binj.news.