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These Doctors Were Censured. Wisconsin’s Prisons Hired Them Anyway. [1]

['Mario Koran', 'Jamie Kelter Davis']

Date: 2024-07-02  

While serving time in a Wisconsin prison in 2021, Darnell Price watched a golf-ball-size lump on his thigh grow as large as a football. Mr. Price pressed for a thorough examination, he said, but the prison’s physician, Dr. Joan Hannula, did not order a biopsy.

Months later, when Mr. Price moved to another prison, a different doctor ordered the test and diagnosed him with Stage 4 soft-tissue cancer. Soon after, the state’s Department of Corrections took the extraordinary step of granting him compassionate release, a measure reserved for the terminally ill or elderly.

“I did my time,” said Mr. Price, 52, who had been convicted of robbery of a financial institution. “But they took the rest of my life.”

Mr. Price filed a federal lawsuit against Dr. Hannula and four other medical employees this year. It is not the first time Dr. Hannula has come under scrutiny: Records show she surrendered her medical license in California in 2004, then pleaded guilty to a drug possession charge and no contest to a charge of forging a prescription.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/us/wisconsin-prison-doctor-health-care.html

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