As the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money. Apparently, spending money also applies to saving money.

Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Wayne Rogers told Jefferson County commissioners during Tuesday’s committee meeting of the County Commission that initiatives in inmate health care were reaping financial benefits.

The department has increased the health care it can offer inmates at the county jail in recent months, Rogers said, not only reducing medical complications for prisoners but also saving money on the cost of treatments and lessening the drain in officers’ time that would have been spent escorting inmates for care.

Rogers said a program for providing kidney dialysis at the jail has been extremely effective.

“We did 234 dialysis treatments in the jail in the calendar year 2024, which meant 234 times we did not have to send two deputies to dialysis treatment and have them have to sit eight hours while the person (was treated),” he said.

“We actually reduced the number of offsite visits by deputies by over 50%. A lot of that was due to bringing that dialysis in-house.”

Rogers said additional benefits were reaped from hiring nurse practitioners. Beginning in March 2024, he said, a nurse practitioner has been available at the jail during second shift.

“That has also been very, very successful,” he said. “In the month of November, we only had five ambulance transfers in the jail. I’ve been at the sheriff’s office for 5½ years and that’s the lowest I’ve seen in my 5½ years.”

Rogers said that a year ago the department was averaging 15 to 17 ambulance transfers per month. The current average is nine, he said.

“A lot of it has to do with providing an extra nurse practitioner, having testing for folks who have chest pains,” he said. “That’s done in the jail now. We are the only certified jail-based lab for that type of testing in the South.”

Hospital admissions are also down by almost 48% and emergency room visits by more than 50%.

Rogers added that the sheriff’s department just extended an agreement to have a nurse practitioner ready and on call on weekends.

“Not this past weekend but the weekend before, there were two times where folks would have under normal circumstances had to go to UAB,” he said. “Instead, we called the nurse practitioner. They were there two hours. It cost us $500 total when normally one ambulance visit costs us $2,000, much less the treatment they went for.

“We’ve been very successful in lowering this number,” Rogers said, “and continue working on that for y’all in the coming year.”

The department didn’t have an overall figure for how much difference the changes have made to the budget.