Beyond the heavy prison gates, there’s a new digital X-ray machine, spacious infirmary, high-tech dental and optometry units and a specialized telemedicine machine that’s connected to an outside medical center for emergency patient-care assistance.

“The physical layout is so much more efficient,” Artus said as he walked around the floors. “And it’s a beautiful complex.”

MORE NURSES

The health-care unit has physicians, nurse practitioners, dentists, dental assistants, pharmacists, a phlebotomist, X-ray technician, mental-health team and a full staff of nurses, who together treat about 8 percent of the inmate population each day.

Artus said the unit brought a slight increase in the nursing staff to help ensure the best patient care for the nearly 3,000 inmates being housed at the facility.

STATE’S NEWEST

Department of Correctional Services spokesperson Erik Kriss said the code-complaint unit was part of a statewide “health-care plan of action” that was initiated in the early 1990s to bring new or rehabilitated health units to every maximum-security and most medium-security facilities.

Outside the department’s five regional medical units, the new Clinton Correctional Health-Care Unit is the largest in the state and was the last to be constructed.

“To provide health care to that many inmates,” Kriss said, “it makes sense to have a modern facility ... It’s just a matter of keeping up and keeping modern so we can provide (the best care possible).”

Kriss said the former hospital, which is now being used for other purposes, still housed pieces of the operating rooms that date back to the old Dannemora State Hospital.

“As our chief medical officer says, you can’t practice good medicine in a museum.”

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