NATCHEZ — The Adams County Board of Supervisors approved Tuesday a $76,000 contract with an inmate health care provider for services for county jail inmates.

The one-year contract with Southern Health Partners, Board Attorney Scott Slover said, will bring a nurse practitioner to the jail Monday through Friday for four hours each day. A nurse practitioner will also be on call on the weekends.

The contract will also include the cost of medications.

The county, Slover said, previously contracted with an individual nurse practitioner for approximately $40,000 a year for services for an hour a day and paid for medication separately.

Sheriff Chuck Mayfield said the nurse practitioner was not always available because of the practitioner’s regular job.

Contracting with a company, Mayfield said, will allow the inmates to have more timely examinations.

“It takes the liability off the county, and it is also better for the inmates,” he said.

Mayfield said the company will also deliver individual doses of medicine for inmates ensuring the inmates are given proper dosage.

“The package will have the inmates’ names and cell numbers and the dosage, so the jailers can just give the package to the inmates and not have to handle the medicine be responsible for the dosage, which takes a lot of the liability away,” Mayfield said.

Slover said the county is responsible for the health of its inmates while in custody, so proper health care is important, especially for liability reasons.

The funds for the contract are already included in this fiscal year’s budget, Slover said.

In other news from the meeting:

-The board of supervisors approved a release of liability and accepted a deed that came after the settlement of a discrepancy in a survey completed as part of the Government Fleet Road Extension Project.

Slover said there was a discrepancy in a survey done while the county was attempting to get a right-of-way from a Government Fleet Road resident for the road’s ongoing project.

“When you’re doing a right-of-way, you have to have the property surveyed,” Slover said. “If the survey is wrong and it goes onto someone else’s property, you’ve basically bought property from the wrong person.”

The county, Slover said, never took a position on whether the survey was wrong, and the discrepancy was settled between the surveyor and the resident.

-The supervisors designated Slover to open bids for trash collection and an emergency watershed protection project at the supervisors’ Monday meeting.

The county’s regularly designated bid opener, Purchasing Clerk Frances Bell, will be out of town attending a conference Monday.

-Board President Darryl Grennell and Supervisor Angela Hutchins were not at the meeting.