Justice Health NSW provides high quality health care, treatment, screening, education and risk assessments for people in custody. Known as primary care, this is the day-to-day health care that is provided to patients to help them return healthier to their communities.
A risk assessment is conducted on every person in police cells. When a person enters a Reception Centre, a Network nurse conducts a more complete assessment of their health needs. From this point, patients are referred to the appropriate services in the correctional environment or externally if the patient requires services that are not delivered by Justice Health NSW.
Justice Health NSW provides ongoing primary care to people in custody by:
- Delivering face to face consults in metropolitan areas and telehealth in rural and remote areas
- Developing health care plans to manage acute and chronic diseases and illnesses
- Providing pharmaceutical medications
- Conducting medical imaging at various sites across the state
- Providing physiotherapy services, including inpatient rehabilitation, orthopaedics, hand therapy and aged care
- Performing eye tests for patients needing glasses
- Arranging hearing aids when needed
- Delivering gender specific services to women, including cervical and breast screening services
- Managing the needs of pregnant women in custody and linking them into community obstetric services on release.