Kentucky Corrections cuts ties with embattled prison healthcare provider

LEXINGTON, Ky. — Kentucky’s Department of Corrections will not extend its long-running contract with its embattled prison healthcare provider in the new year, according to officials with the health care company.

Wellpath, the state’s current prison healthcare provider, said in a statement it would no longer be serving Kentucky’s prison population after January 2027. The company has provided healthcare for Kentucky prisons for more than a decade, but has faced financial troubles in recent years and has had to settle lawsuits over inmate deaths.

“Our contract is projected to expire between January 12 and the 26 of 2027, and Wellpath will no longer provide healthcare services to the Department after that date,” said Skip Thurman, a spokesperson for Wellpath. “This kind of change is common in our industry. When a contract comes to an end, the Commonwealth issues a Request for Proposals, and this time around the new contract went to another provider.”

Kentucky has contracted with Wellpath, formerly named Correct Care Solutions, since 2014. Despite the company’s former financial trouble the state re-upped its contract and is paying Wellpath $60 million this year to provide healthcare to Kentucky inmates and insure prisons against healthcare-related lawsuits.

The Department of Corrections was not immediately available to comment. It is unclear who the state’s new healthcare provider will be.

Thurman said federal law requires Wellpath to issue a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice, which is an advance warning that a U.S. employer must give before a plant closing or a mass layoff.

For the employees affected, employment with Wellpath ends when the contract expires, Thurman said. It does not mean the healthcare positions will go away.

“The incoming provider will continue providing healthcare services, and we anticipate that many employees will have opportunities to continue in their current roles with the new provider,” Thurman said.

“Our primary focus as we approach the transition is our team,” Thurman said. “We’re already working with the incoming provider to support a smooth transition with as little disruption as possible, and we anticipate that many of our employees will have the opportunity to continue in their current roles with the new provider.”

Wellpath’s troubled past

Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Wellpath is a healthcare company that provides medical and mental health services to people in correctional facilities and treatment centers.

Wellpath was once one of the nation’s largest for-profit healthcare providers for prisoners. But Wellpath is the second corrections healthcare system to file for bankruptcy in the past three years, following Tehum Care Services in 2023, reports show.

When Wellpath signed a contract to provide healthcare for prison inmates in Kentucky, it assured the state it had third-party insurance to pay out lawsuits related to claims of negligence and wrongful death.

Such lawsuits have arisen in Kentucky. Most recently, Wellpath settled two Kentucky lawsuits filed by Brittany Jones, whose brother Chad Raymond died while in their care at Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex.

Raymond died May 9, 2021, of endocarditis, an infection of the heart’s valves, after his condition worsened over a period of 11 days in custody, according to his sister’s lawsuit.

The case was initially slated to be settled in 2024, according to court documents, but Wellpath declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy, halting the proceedings.

The lawsuit was eligible for settlement after Wellpath emerged last year in good financial standing.

On Oct. 10, 2025, Jones filed a second lawsuit — this time against the state justice Cabinet and its officials for failing to ensure Wellpath could pay out wrongful death and negligence lawsuits against Kentucky prisons.

Despite assurances from Wellpath that it could cover such settlements, James Seitz, the company’s director of insurance, wrote in bankruptcy filings that Wellpath’s insurance was merely a “fronting policy” and did not appear to provide actual coverage against lawsuits.

Fronting policies — which don’t require proof that a company can pay out settlements but instead assure the policyholder the company will be able to pay out if it comes to that — meet requirements set by state lawmakers that prisons have coverage from a licensed insurer, Seitz wrote.

Wellpath’s insurance policies have been litigated in other states, too.

In Georgia, for example, lawyers claimed Wellpath lied to county officials about the type of coverage they offered. As in Kentucky, in addition to providing medical coverage for inmates, the company was on the hook if a prison had to pay out a lawsuit related to medical negligence.

And the company was required to have insurance of its own to pay out those lawsuits, in case it filed for bankruptcy.

But the sheriff’s office in Cobb County, Georgia, near Atlanta, claims in a lawsuit filed Feb. 18 that Wellpath didn’t actually have such insurance. When Cobb County corrections officials were sued for medical negligence, Wellpath failed to pay up, the suit says.