The department is responsible for providing health care to adult and juvenile offenders incarcerated in department facilities and programs.
Health care includes medical, dental, vision, and mental health services.
The department is also responsible for ensuring Montana inmates housed in private prisons and other contracted beds receive adequate health care services. Our audit concentrated on the department's role in administering inmate health care services. As the prison system has grown, the cost of providing health care to inmates has increased and will continue to increase. This included expenditures for providing medical, dental, vision, and mental health care to adult and juvenile offenders incarcerated in both DOC facilities and in contracted bed facilities. In the past five years there have been rapid and dramatic changes for the Montana Department of Corrections.