For years, Illinois paid Wexford Health Sources to provide medical care to the state's incarcerated population. For years, federal monitors, investigative journalists, and families of people who died in Illinois prisons documented what that care actually looked like: a "one good eye" policy that denied treatment as long as one eye still functioned, care so poor for people with dementia that court monitors compared it to elder abuse, and deaths that independent reviewers found to be preventable. In 2025, Illinois finally ended its relationship with Wexford — but the path there took more than a decade of documented failure.
The History: Decades of Documented Problems
Wexford Health Sources has been Illinois's prison healthcare provider for decades, operating under a contract worth billions of dollars. For much of that period, critics, advocates, and ultimately federal courts documented a pattern of inadequate care:
- A federal judge determined that the care was so poor it violated the U.S. Constitution, ordering an independent monitor to oversee compliance with a consent decree
- Independent monitors released reports documenting deaths from substandard medical care
- Patients were found to be malnourished after their deaths — evidence that basic nutritional needs were not being met for medically vulnerable inmates
- The infamous "one good eye" policy — documented in reporting — effectively denied eye care treatment if an inmate retained any vision in one eye
- Care for people with dementia was so deficient that court monitors explicitly compared conditions to elder abuse
The $4 Billion Contract — Then the Revocation
In late December 2023, despite the documented record of failures and the ongoing federal consent decree, the Pritzker administration selected Wexford's bid for a new contract worth more than $4 billion — a five-year deal with an option to renew for five more years. The decision drew immediate criticism from advocates and watchdogs who argued that rewarding a company with this track record with the largest contract in Illinois corrections history was indefensible.
A federal court filing in 2024 provided the clearest evidence of the scale of the problem: a review of 107 deaths filed in federal court identified nearly 900 issues with how medical cases were handled in the period leading to those deaths — an average of more than eight problems per death.
Under sustained pressure from that court filing, advocates, and the media, Illinois revoked its selection of Wexford. The state instead executed a short-term emergency contract with Centurion Health to take over the department's troubled healthcare system. The transition to Centurion was reported by WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times in July 2025.
What Centurion Health Is
Centurion Health is a subsidiary of MHM Services, one of the larger correctional healthcare companies in the United States. It operates in dozens of states and manages both mental health and physical health programs for state DOCs. Like Wexford, it is a for-profit private company operating under a state contract — and like all correctional healthcare contractors, it will face the same structural pressures that critics argue lead to undertreatment: financial incentives to minimize care delivery, limited external oversight between contract renewals, and a captive patient population with no ability to seek care elsewhere.
The emergency contract nature of the Centurion arrangement reflects the urgency of the transition — the state needed to replace Wexford quickly without running a full competitive procurement process. Whether Centurion's performance will differ materially from Wexford's remains to be seen and will be monitored by the federal court through the ongoing consent decree.
What Families Should Know
If your loved one has a serious medical condition and is in Illinois DOC custody, the healthcare transition from Wexford to Centurion means a change in their medical provider — potentially new providers, new systems, and a transition period during which continuity of care is most at risk. Specifically:
- Medication continuity: During any healthcare provider transition, medication management is most vulnerable to disruption. If your loved one is on critical medications (insulin, psychiatric medications, HIV antiretrovirals, blood pressure medications), ask them to confirm with the new medical team that all medications have been transferred to the new provider's records.
- Ongoing conditions: If your loved one has a condition that was being managed under Wexford — or was being inadequately managed under Wexford — ask them to request a fresh intake assessment with the new provider.
- Serious concerns: The federal consent decree in Illinois means that there is an active federal court framework for addressing serious healthcare failures. The organizations Uptown People's Law Center (uptownlaw.org) and the MacArthur Justice Center monitor the consent decree and accept complaints about healthcare.
IDOC headquarters: 1301 Concordia Court, P.O. Box 19277, Springfield, IL 62794. Phone: (217) 558-2200.