Judge calls prisoner's claim on lack of Rx 'serious matter'

A federal judge Thursday sternly admonished Arkansas Department of Correction staff and employees of the prison's contract medical provider, saying an inmate's claim that he hasn't been receiving proper medical care to prevent his transplanted kidney from failing "is an extremely serious matter."

"I'm awfully concerned," U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson said at the end of a 31/2-hour hearing, directing his remarks at prison employees as well as nurses employed by Correct Care Solutions of Tennessee.

Wilson said he couldn't issue a preliminary injunction, as requested, to force the defendants to properly administer the anti-rejection medication because Varner Unit inmate Alexander Gilliana, 22, testified that since he filed a lawsuit May 19, he has been receiving the medicine on a more timely basis.

Wilson said that alleviated the issue of "irreparable harm" that must be shown to obtain a preliminary injunction, but, "I have serious doubts he was getting it sometimes," regardless of who was to blame -- staff, nurses or Gilliana himself, who said he feared that filing a formal grievance would take too long to resolve, so instead he called his grandfather, who in turn called the prison and demanded that Gilliana receive the life-saving medication.

Wilson refused to dismiss the lawsuit, as attorneys for the prison and the contract medical provider requested, and said he will schedule a hearing on the merits of the case.

The lawsuit, filed on Gilliana's behalf by Little Rock attorney John Wesley Hall, seeks a permanent injunction requiring the prison and contract nurses to administer the medicine according to the requirements of Gilliana's doctors, as well as compensatory and punitive damages, and attorneys' fees.

Gilliana of Hot Springs was sent to prison in January after being convicted in Garland County Circuit Court of possession of a firearm on school property and is eligible for release in September. He lost both kidneys to disease when he was 6 years old and was on dialysis for six years until he had a kidney transplant at Arkansas Children's Hospital in 2005, at age 12. In the 10 years since, he said, he has taken his anti-rejection medicine twice a day, in 12-hour intervals, missing "maybe one or two doses" until being locked up.

The prisoner, who is small in stature, testified that he is supposed to take other medicine as well, for a total of about 12 pills a day. He said he provided his complete medical history at the prison's diagnostic unit, through which all prisoners are first processed, and health care workers "said that they would order" the medication.

But he initially went without it for seven days as he was shifted among the prison's Malvern and Varner units, he said. Then, after spending April in the Garland County jail because of an issue with his court case, he returned to the Varner Unit, where he said a nurse initially couldn't find the pills that the jail had sent with him.

Gilliana testified that he then had trouble getting the correct dosage of his medications, or sometimes getting the drugs at all, and that he wasn't allowed to take the medication except during specified "pill calls," which guards didn't always announce so that prisoners in the barracks could hear them. He said he had a hard time coordinating his need to take his medicine every 12 hours with the four designated "pill calls" throughout the day, and that a guard once pulled him out of a "pill call" line because it wasn't his designated time, then when he became frustrated, told him to "drop dead."

He said he ended up receiving the medicine "maybe half the time," and was also denied blood draws that his doctors said were needed to regularly monitor his blood levels.

Gilliana acknowledged, under cross-examination by attorney Michelle Banks Odum of White Hall, who represents Correct Care, that he didn't fully understand the grievance process, and may not have actually filed what he thought was a grievance. He also indicated he wasn't aware of some other procedures that inmates are supposed to follow to talk with nurses or report problems, despite receiving an inmate handbook upon his arrival.

Odum asked "how medical management will know" about problems if he doesn't tell them through the proper channels, to which he replied, "I don't know."

Billy W. Inman, deputy warden at Varner, testified that whenever Gilliana's grandfather called, he passed on the man's concerns to Amanda King, a nurse in charge of the unit's infirmary, but he said he doesn't supervise King and couldn't direct her to do anything.

Metro on 05/29/2015

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