A brownish woody building successful nan woodsHiland Mountain Correctional Center successful Eagle River, 1 of nan 15 accommodation nan caller main aesculapian serviceman pinch oversee. (Courtesy of nan Alaska Department of Corrections)

The Alaska Department of Corrections has a caller main aesculapian officer: Dr. Timothy Ballard.

The section announced Ballard’s hiring this week. Ballard is simply a expert and a retired Air Force colonel who has a master’s grade successful biology health. Before this, he was nan main aesculapian serviceman of Alaska Regional Hospital successful Anchorage for 3 years. 

Alaska’s corrections section is nan largest wellness attraction installation and behavioral wellness attraction supplier successful nan state. The practitioners often dainty group who don’t aliases can’t entree wellness attraction and intelligence wellness attraction extracurricular incarceration. 

The department’s erstwhile main aesculapian officer, Dr. Robert Lawrence, near nan occupation successful May to return the aforesaid position for nan state, replacing Dr. Anne Zink. 

While Lawrence was main aesculapian serviceman for corrections, nan section faced scrutiny for precocious termination rates and lawsuits for wrongful deaths of prisoners. But he said he worked to trim deaths while there. 

The caller main aesculapian officer, Ballard, will caput a analyzable strategy of attraction successful nan state’s 15 jails, prisons and pretrial facilities. So acold this year, 12 prisoners person died successful nan state’s care. Corrections officials opportunity they’re besides moving to accommodate to nan fentanyl pandemic by treating addiction and reversing overdoses pinch Narcan successful their facilities.

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Rachel Cassandra