To facilitate a baseline continuity of care, correctional health care providers or transition planners must ensure that a prisoner can continue whatever medication regimen he or she was following in the days preceding his or her release when he or she returns to the community. Generally, a person should leave jail or prison with a medication supply sufficient to cover the time lapse between his or her last medical appointment at the correctional facility and his or her first appointment in the community. When transition planners or correctional health care providers make an inmate's initial appointment for follow-up care with a community-based provider, they should determine precisely what this interval will be and provide for exactly the amount of medication needed. Where the actual time lapse is unknown, however, health care providers should estimate the time it would reasonably take the person to obtain follow-up care in the community to which he or she will return. At a minimum, in accordance with the American Public Health Association standards, health care providers should supply a person leaving prison or jail a two-week supply of medication upon his or her discharge. ^[1]  

Example: Health Services, Georgia Department of Corrections (GA)

At the time of discharge, the Department of Corrections supplies all individuals with a minimum of two weeks' worth of medication. In addition, institutional nurses will set up appointments with community providers when possible and enroll eligible individuals in Medicare.

Whatever the amount of medicine given, providers must label all medications according to state pharmaceutical standards and explain to prisoners the proper self-administration of the medication.

A prescription is not an adequate substitute for the medication itself. Filling the prescription and paying for it present barriers to proper adherence to the treatment regimen. Indeed, the delay in most medical benefit programs makes it especially difficult for recently released prisoners to fill prescriptions immediately upon their re-entry. (See Policy Statement 24, Identification and Benefits, for more on obtaining timely health benefits for recently released prisoners.) Nonetheless, where corrections-based health care providers by law or by policy cannot provide people leaving prison or jail with an amount of medication to sufficiently cover the entire period between discharge and their first appointment in the community, they should give these individuals prescriptions to be filled when the original supply of medication is depleted.