Dauphin County averted a potential catastrophe this month as the company that provides medical services at the jail was prepared to pull out before the county had a chance to select a new provider.

PrimeCare has provided medical services at Dauphin County Prison since 1988. Their current contract was set to expire at the end of the year but in November, the company invoked an early-termination clause, which ended the contract at the end of this month.

The county is in the process of selecting a medical services provider to take over this summer, which meant the county was facing a disastrous medical cliff on May 31 if PrimeCare pulled their employees. Those employees provide vital work giving daily medication and providing emergency care to the roughly 800 people living at the jail.

Dauphin County late last week reached a tentative agreement to maintain medical services at the county jail while it finishes reviewing proposals for the contract.

But it was an agreement that almost didn’t happen.

Tom Weber, CEO of PrimeCare, emailed the county prison board on May 7 saying that “not a single county official has reached out to us” to see if PrimeCare would work beyond its current end date of May 31. That prompted a discussion that ended with an agreement to pay Primecare an additional $80,000 in June on top of the current contracted fee of roughly $300,000 a month.

Primecare’s early exit from its contract came after PennLive uncovered questionable payments from PrimeCare’s founder and former owner Carl Hoffman to former County Commissioner Jeff Haste.

PennLive reported Haste received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Hoffman that Haste had never disclosed and that he used as a downpayment on a house in 2017.

PrimeCare’s decision also came after the county approved an audit of the company last year. This was the first time the county audited PrimeCare in the nearly 40 years it has had the contract.

Weber said Primecare ended its contract early with Dauphin County because they were “losing money,” about $325,000 last year, he said, declining to say whether this meant PrimeCare ran a deficit in Dauphin County or made less profit than they would in another county.

Dauphin County is currently reviewing proposals from PrimeCare and five other companies to decide which company will get the jail’s next healthcare contract come June.

The county commissioners are set to vote Wednesday to approve the extension with PrimeCare. If the company is needed in July, the county will have to pay an additional $15,000, and $30,000 for August.

Weber’s May 7 email explained potential upcharges by noting that he expects to have to pay bonuses to PrimeCare employees to stay on if his company did not win the new contract..

“It is somewhat unbelievable to assume we would just gratuitously continue to lose money, face ridicule and risk without even an ask,” Weber wrote to the prison board.

In the same email, Weber called increased public scrutiny of Dauphin County Prison since nine people died there in 2019 “hysteria” that was “premised on, and fueled by misinformation.”

During a May 6 prison town hall, Winnie Okello, founder of the Harassment and Assault Reporting Platform, said changes need to be made at the jail because people continue to die there.

Twenty-two people have died while at Dauphin County Prison or after falling ill inside since the beginning of 2019.

“Unfortunately it is true people die everywhere,” Weber wrote on May 7. “Only when it happens in jail must it be someone else’s fault.”

PennLive asked Weber what he meant by his emailed statements referring to “hysteria” and “misinformation.”

Weber shared a series of concerns that were based on wrong information:

• Weber wrongly believed PennLive was counting people who died at state prisons or on county work release in the total of 22 deaths.
• Weber also said PennLive published articles that implicated PrimeCare in the death of 21-year-old Ty’Rique Riley in 2019 but wrongly said PennLive didn’t write about it when PrimeCare was dismissed from that civil lawsuit.

Weber also said PennLive’s use of the word “independent” to refer to the pathologist hired by Riley’s family was an indication of bias against PrimeCare.

“We have had other individuals die of natural causes without prior complaints,” Weber told PennLive. “We have had individuals overdose, and we have had suicides without any warning signs. Although we are blamed in the media for these deaths, we were not responsible.”

Weber said PrimeCare took responsibility for the death of one person, referring to Jimmy King, who died in 2020 at DCP from an untreated brain bleed after repeatedly complaining about increasingly severe headaches following a fight with his cellmate.

But his knowledge of the case reflected a series of misunderstandings.

Weber initially said PrimeCare staff didn’t know King had been struck in the head, but PennLive provided his own company records showing King was seen by providers after the fight and they made notations he was hit in the head.

Weber then said he “misspoke” and that PrimeCare staff knew King had been in a fight and struck in the head but they didn’t know he was struck in the head with a tablet a few days later.

PennLive then provided Weber with an entry from King’s medical records where a PrimeCare staffer wrote that King was having headaches “after being struck in the head with a tablet.”

Weber acknowledged his original statements were wrong.

“It must be noted the individual was seen and the incident occurred at a time where numerous incarcerated individuals and staff were complaining of headaches because certain incarcerated individuals were smoking paper soaked in insecticide,” he wrote.

PrimeCare settled a federal lawsuit with King’s family in 2024 for an undisclosed amount of money.