New prisons chief to study health care costs

SPRINGFIELD -- The new head of the Illinois Department of Corrections says studying prison health care costs will be a high priority for him.

Michael Randle, in one of his last acts as a top Ohio prisons official, helped move bedridden inmates to nursing homes. The idea was to ease prison overcrowding and shift costs to the federal government.

Randle says he plans to visit all of Illinois' prisons. He says he doesn't yet know whether ideas that worked in Ohio will work in Illinois.

Annual medical spending for Illinois prisoners has risen more than 60 percent since 2001. Health care costs for state prisons totals $118 million. That's nearly $2,600 per inmate.