The Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem. (Ron Cooper/Oregon Capital Chronicle)
The mother of an Oregon inmate who died in prison has filed a $4 million wrongful death lawsuit against the Oregon Department of Corrections, alleging the agency waited nearly a year to test and diagnose her son when warning signs for prostate cancer emerged.
Janet Blanscet of California, the mother of William Blanscet Jr., filed the lawsuit last week in Marion County Circuit Court against the Oregon Department of Corrections and Dr. Reed Paulson, former chief medical director of Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem. The lawsuit alleges Blanscet, who died in 2023 at the age of 53, waited nine months for imaging tests that found advanced prostate cancer, even as he suffered and complained for months about pain that put him in a wheelchair before his diagnosis. It says Blanscet would not have died from the cancer with a timely diagnosis and treatment at Oregon State Penitentiary.
The case is the latest of a series of high-profile incidents and lawsuits over medical care provided by the Oregon Department of Corrections, which has about 12,000 inmates in a dozen facilities across the state and more than 630 health services employees. Just last month, the mother of another man sued the agency, alleging a lack of mental health care led to his death at Oregon State Correctional Institution east of Salem.
Also in December, the agency put two of its medical chief and the assistant director for health services on administrative leave pending an investigation and a review of the agency’s management of medical care. And last year, an outside accrediting agency found a backlog of nearly 600 medical appointments at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, Oregon’s women’s prison in Wilsonville.
Amber Campbell, a spokesperson for the agency, declined to comment on the lawsuit. Campbell also declined to comment on the agency’s ongoing investigation into Dr. Warren Roberts, its chief of medicine, and Joe Bugher, the agency’s assistant director of health services.
Problems start in 2018
This case scrutinizes a chain of events that started in early May 2018 for Blanscet, who was serving a 32-year prison sentence after his 2007 conviction on rape, sodomy and kidnapping charges in Josephine County.
Blanscet reported severe and persistent hip pain that restricted his movement. At the time, Dr. Reed Paulson, then the prison’s chief medical officer, failed to recognize the symptoms and denied adequate medical care for six weeks, the complaint said.
On June 29, 2018, Blanscet received an X-ray after persistent complaints that found osteoarthrosis, which impacts joints, and other problems with his hip, the lawsuit said. But Paulson and other agency employees failed to order follow-up imaging, including scans or an MRI, the lawsuit said.
Six more months passed. Blanscet continued to have excruciating pain in his hip, lost weight and had difficulty moving around, the lawsuit said. In response, Paulson and agency staff allegedly blamed the pain on childhood injuries and refused to investigate, the lawsuit said.
In January 2019, Paulson ordered Blanscet to start physical therapy, even though the source of the pain was not identified, the lawsuit said. The pain worsened and treatment was delayed until February, when Blanscet became completely immobile due the pain at a level of “10/10,” the lawsuit said.
In February 2019, he received a pelvic MRI that found more deterioration of the right half of his pelvis and lesions on surrounding bones, including his right femur, left side of his pelvis and spine. A biopsy a month later found advanced stage four prostate cancer that had spread to his bones, the lawsuit said. Chemotherapy started six days later.
If the scan happened earlier, the lawsuit said, “his physician would have diagnosed his cancer and started the appropriate treatment sooner, saving decedent months of unnecessary pain, suffering, extraordinary emotional distress and death.”
Earlier treatment also likely would have helped Blanscet avoid spine treatment and side effects of a pulmonary embolism and neck, back and shoulder pain, the lawsuit said.
“The cause of death was cancer,” the lawsuit said. “He would not have died from cancer had he been diagnosed with cancer and treated for cancer in a timely manner.”
A 13-year-long career
The lawsuit alleges the agency and Paulson, who retired in 2022, were negligent in Blanscet’s case and failed to order tests in a timely manner and did not diagnose the cancer for nearly one year.
Paulson started working for the agency in 2009 before he retired from the agency 13 years later. Oregon Medical Board records show no history of sanctions.
Paulson did not return a message left on the phone number listed in medical board records, which show his license is still current.
Paulson has a high profile in correctional medicine. In October 2022, he was a speaker for the National Commission on Correctional Healthcare at a conference in Las Vegas. The topic: hip pain evaluation and management, according to the schedule.
Paulson also has worked as an outside expert, testifying in medical neglect lawsuits against other correctional agencies, including Washington state, media reports show. According to a Seattle Times story, Paulson provided expert testimony in a case that Washington state settled for nearly $10 million after a woman in custody died from cervical cancer that the prison failed to treat.
According to his speaker’s bio, Paulson studied medicine at the Creighton University School of Medicine and completed a residency at Harbor/UCLA Medical Center. He obtained a master’s degree in public health from the University of California at Berkeley and became board-certified in sports medicine in 1992.
Besides his 13 years at the Oregon corrections agency, he worked for 25 years in emergency and sports medicine, the bio said.
The lawsuit seeks $4 million in non-economic damages and another $40,000 in economic damages.
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