Erie County plans to improve the health care for prisoners by taking those duties out of the sheriff’s hands.

Dr. Anthony Billittier IV, county health commissioner, now can assume daily oversight of the 34 health care employees at the county Holding Center in downtown Buffalo and the county Correctional Facility in Alden.

Billittier and County Attorney Cheryl A. Green, with a sheriff’s official standing in agreement, sold the change to county legislators last week as a way to improve the care that has troubled state and federal regulators.

Sheriff Timothy B. Howard said transferring the jails’ health care duties to a health agency, such as the Health Department, had been envisioned years ago.

“The current county executive has sped up the pace,” Howard said of Chris Collins, Billittier’s boss.

Both the state Commission of Correction, which polices local jails, and the U. S. Justice Department have examined health and mental health care provided to the county’s inmates after at least six have died in custody since 2007.

In a case being examined by the Commission of Correction’s Medical Review Board, Marguerite Arrindell, 54, of Buffalo suffered a stroke after she was denied her blood-pressure medicine in the Holding Center. She died weeks later as a result, a lawyer for her estate alleges in a lawsuit against the county.

Other circumstances suggest the health staff, at least at the Holding Center, is frayed. Last summer, two nurses were fired when superiors found they had contaminated the skin cream of a third nurse.

The third nurse later was suspended for issues that included inmate care. She complained of discrimination by telling the state Human Rights Division that other employees who are not black, African- American or Nigerian were not disciplined after distributing wrong medicines, failing to provide medical care resulting in an inmate’s death and using cell phones when prohibited.

Billittier, who is considered the jail’s chief physician, told county lawmakers he will become more involved in improving the care of inmates. Legislators later allowed moving nearly $1 million from the jail budget to the Health Department to transfer the personnel. The sheriff’s staff will continue to schedule their shifts and provide other supervisory roles.

The county also is seeking a new contractor to provide physician assistants, vital to health care in the two facilities.

The county attorney recently disclosed in an internal memo that the longtime contractor, Physicians Assistants of Western New York, had walked off the job April 10 in a contract dispute. Collins has hired Exigence Hospitalist Medical Services of Erie County on an emergency basis until he can seek formal bids.