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Q&A

CM Narcisse on correctional health services contracts and providers

New York City Council · Jun 5, 2026 · starts 5:08:17 · 4 min 45 sec

Narcisse asks about correctional health contracts. Dr. Yang explains the primary affiliate is PAGNI for frontline providers, with two small contracts for dental and emergency medicine. Contracts are evaluated annually, and some have been terminated for performance issues.

Mercedes Narcisse

Correctional health services.

Mercedes Narcisse

The executive plan includes a baseline of $32.2 million in additional funding starting in fiscal 2026 and increasing to nearly $40 million by fiscal 2030.

Mercedes Narcisse

The funding will support correctional health services.

Mercedes Narcisse

Spending related to affiliated costs and pharmaceutical drugs.

Mercedes Narcisse

We know how expensive that can be.

Mercedes Narcisse

How many providers does H&H contract with, I mean, with further provision of correctional health services?

Mercedes Narcisse

How were these providers chosen?

Mercedes Narcisse

How?

Unidentified speaker

Hi.

Unidentified speaker

Correctional Health Services has one major affiliate, professional affiliate, as do our sister facilities in the system.

Unidentified speaker

And our affiliate, just like some of the other facilities, is PAGNI, the Physician Affiliate Group of New York.

Unidentified speaker

And they hire, we select individuals who are frontline providers.

Unidentified speaker

These are doctors, physicians, physician assistants, mental health clinicians, mental health treatment aides, you know, 1199 and doctor's council, primarily because when we came over to health and hospitals,

Unidentified speaker

a bulk of the staff who were vetted and interviewed and selected from what had been Corizon were already in doctor's council in 1199.

Unidentified speaker

And for those individuals whom we selected to join our new team, we wanted to preserve their benefits and their seniority and their retirement benefits.

Unidentified speaker

So that's how we ended up with PAGNI.

Unidentified speaker

They are a professional affiliate.

Unidentified speaker

It's only frontline providers, patient care providers.

Unidentified speaker

All the supervisors and managers are on health and hospitals.

Unidentified speaker

It is not a contractual, typical or traditional contractual relationship.

Unidentified speaker

So that is our main contractor.

Unidentified speaker

We have two other small professional contracts.

Unidentified speaker

One is an 18-staff dental, carceral dental provider.

Unidentified speaker

They're dentists and dental hygienists.

Unidentified speaker

and oral surgeons, and then we have eight emergency medicine physicians who are in a group, and we contract with them to be on island.

Mercedes Narcisse

So those are private groups?

Mercedes Narcisse

What's the name of the group?

Unidentified speaker

The dental is Correctional Dental Associates.

Mercedes Narcisse

Okay.

Unidentified speaker

And Urgent Medical is a small PC.

Mercedes Narcisse

Okay.

Mercedes Narcisse

They are from New York City or out of state?

Unidentified speaker

Correctional Dental is in New Jersey and New York City.

Unidentified speaker

And urgent medical is in New York City, and I think they might do some work in Westchester, but they're New York City.

Mercedes Narcisse

We have a lot of doctors in New York City.

Mercedes Narcisse

So anyway, let's go forward with that.

Mercedes Narcisse

We can always explore that deeper, dive into it.

Mercedes Narcisse

What are the length of H&H correctional health services contracts?

Mercedes Narcisse

How long?

Unidentified speaker

So our contracts, depending on what kind of contracts we're talking about, as part of health and hospitals, we use the health and hospitals contracts as much as possible.

Unidentified speaker

Those are basically for laboratory or pharmaceutical and medical supplies like Cardinal Health, and those contracts generally run three to five years depending on the need.

Mercedes Narcisse

How many years?

Mercedes Narcisse

You have them?

Mercedes Narcisse

How long usually have the contract, the cycle of the contract?

Unidentified speaker

The system contracts run three to five years.

Mercedes Narcisse

Three to five years.

Unidentified speaker

And they're renewed at Correctional Health Services annually, re-evaluate the performance of each of our contracts as to whether we're satisfied or not.

Mercedes Narcisse

You're re-evaluating them.

Mercedes Narcisse

Annually.

Mercedes Narcisse

It's not automatically like a year cycle like.

Unidentified speaker

Annually we do this with our senior staff.

Mercedes Narcisse

Okay.

Unidentified speaker

To evaluate whether we're getting what we pay for.

Mercedes Narcisse

How, I mean, the evaluation that you do with your contractors, based on the responses of the staffing, people that are dealing with their actual contractors?

Unidentified speaker

We have taken up corrective steps with some contractors.

Unidentified speaker

We have terminated contracts.

Unidentified speaker

We have performance measures, including turnaround time, quality of responses and results.

Mercedes Narcisse

All right.

Mercedes Narcisse

I have some colleagues.

Mercedes Narcisse

There's different things going on.

Mercedes Narcisse

I would love to ask a question, but my colleagues, they have to run Selvena Brooks-Bower.

Mercedes Narcisse

I know she came directly.

Mercedes Narcisse

She dived into it.

Mercedes Narcisse

Okay, Selvena Brooks-Bower.