You won't see many Salt Lake County jail inmates at the local hospital much longer.

On Tuesday the County Council voted to pay to open up a new acute medical unit at the jail. Think of it as a "little jail suite" where inmates can receive medical care while still being locked behind bars, Sheriff Jim Winder said.

Now, instead of transporting inmates to local hospitals — which can be both costly and unsafe — inmates will be treated for most problems in the jail's new acute medical unit.

Winder said the new unit will save at least $400,00 a year "to provide substantially enhanced care for our inmates." That number doesn't include potential savings in inmate transport costs or the reduction of future emergency room visits.

It wasn't hard to convince the council to open the unit. It all came down to a simple bottom line: "We save money," Councilman Jeff Allen said.

"Medical costs have gotten so expensive that we can now provide them, we believe, at a cheaper rate than we can out in the private sector."

The jail needs to hire 11 new full-time employees, but Winder said the costs will be offset by the reduction in other costs.

The jail opened in 1999, complete with the infrastructure for the acute medical unit, but it never received funding.

"It sat dormant all this time," Winder said. "It will be the first time it's open since the jail was built."

Winder and Allen said they'd like to set up some sort of partnership with the nursing schools. Nursing in the jail would provide great experience for budding nurses, Winder said.

"They'll see sometimes in a week what they'll see in a year" in the emergency room, he said.

Intermountain Healthcare will assist the county in buying equipment, as well as assist in setting up the operations of the facility, Allen said.

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