CCHP-A Is the Way: Seth Stabinsky, MD, CCHP-A

Seth A. Stabinsky, MD, CCHP-CP, CCHP-A, the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s chief medical officer, is ecstatic to have met all the requirements to achieve CCHP-A certification, including passing the Certified Correctional Health Professional-Advanced examination at the NCCHC National Conference in September. He joins an elite group of health care professionals who have demonstrated excellence, commitment, and contributions to the field of correctional health care. “It was very important to me to demonstrate my knowledge of and ability to apply the NCCHC standards across varied carceral settings,” he says. “While fellowships in correctional health care have emerged and there soon may be board certification through the American Board of Medical Specialties, for now, this was my way of demonstrating my commitment to the gold standard of correctional medicine.”

Dr. Stabinsky has practiced medicine in private, public, and academic settings and spent 11 years in the medical device industry working for both startups and multinational conglomerates, but he was happiest as a site medical director in the Arizona State prison system where he worked for eight years before moving to the SLO County Jail in 2022. At SLO County Jail, he oversees the county’s contract for jail health care with its private contractor. He describes his job as being “near perfect” and raves about his boss, the sheriff, and and his correctional colleagues, as well as the on-site caregivers at the jail.

“You cannot have a high-functioning health care delivery system in a carceral setting without great cooperation between the custody side and the health care side,” he says. “This is understood by all of our staff and strongly supported by the sheriff. We are a team that utilizes NCCHC standards and accreditation as our policy baseline to ensure we are meeting or exceeding the care that is provided in and for our surrounding community.”

Besides monitoring health care delivery in the jail, Dr. Stabinsky has the privilege of working with other county agencies and community-based organizations. He also works closely with the local Medi-Cal managed care plan to coordinate and enhance relationships that will ensure success of the California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM) initiative for justice-involved individuals, part of the CMS Medicaid Reentry Section 1115 waiver that was approved for California in January 2023. Because California was the first state in the nation to receive this waiver, Dr. Stabinsky and colleagues from the SLO County Jail hope to present their experience at NCCHC’s 2024 National Conference on Correctional Health Care in Las Vegas.

“NCCHC conferences are a great format where new information can be shared,” says Dr. Stabinsky. “California’s rollout can serve as a roadmap for our colleagues who work in other states that will soon have waivers similar to ours. It is the first time in the history of Medicaid that incarcerated individuals will be eligible for services delivered inside jails and prisons to better prepare them for release back into the community. Hopefully, these initiatives will improve our patients’ lives and decrease recidivism.”

Dr. Stabinsky is a graduate of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. He completed residency training at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center in New Jersey and a Society of Reproductive Surgeons fellowship at Stanford University. He received CCHP designation in 2014 and became a CCHP-CP in 2017 before earning his CCHP-A in 2023. Also in 2023, he became a fellow of the American College of Correctional Physicians. He is a member of the Academy of Correctional Health Professionals and the NCCHC Committee on Systemic Racism.

He encourages his correctional health colleagues to take advantage of all CCHP opportunities up to and including the CCHP-A program, he says, for “the feeling of accomplishment and pride that accompanies successful, objective measurement of one’s knowledge base in the field.”

Learn more about the CCHP program and the CCHP-A exam.