MEMPHIS, September 14, 2026 - A Wexford Health Sources executive told the Shelby County Commission on September 14, 2026 that roughly 30 of about 100 positions allocated to 201 Poplar were vacant, 16 days before the company's contract began.

Commissioner Amber Huett-Garcia asked for the current number of open positions on the base hiring plan the Commission had been presented, and how many remained to be filled.

The answer came with an explicit caution. The executive said she had looked into it that morning and asked the Commission to take her figures as approximate. She said the entire full-time-equivalent complement of the contract is about 213. About 100 of those are allocated to 201 Poplar, and about 30 of them are vacant. She said Jail East, which holds female detainees, is full. She said the juvenile facility is full. She said the correctional center's allocation is about 75 full-time equivalents and about 10 are vacant.

That is roughly 40 vacancies against roughly 213 positions, with three quarters of the gap in one building.

The building with the gap is the one they named as the problem

Earlier in the same item, the same executive had told the Commission where the company would concentrate. She said staffing levels at Jail East, the youth facility and the correctional center all looked good, and "I understand just like many of you mentioned the other day, it's 201 Poplar where we need to focus."

Commissioner Derek Mills had described 201 Poplar as holding roughly 3,000 people fresh off the street.

Vacant posts, the county says, do not mean uncovered shifts

Commissioner Huett-Garcia asked whether any one position was the most common among the vacancies. Latasha Palmer, identified on the record as the county's health care compliance administrator, said the licensed practical nurse role is typically the hardest to fill.

Palmer then made the county's central point about the vacancy numbers. "What I will say as far as those vacant positions, unfilled positions don't yield uncovered shifts," she said. "So the shifts are still being covered by utilizing part-time or PRN, which are as needed employees and agency."

Commissioner Huett-Garcia closed the exchange by turning to the public. "If you are an LPN and you are looking for a job, we have one for you," she said.

The handover

The contract term began October 1, 2026. The company said it would have representatives inside each facility on September 30 so that questions could be handled at the moment the contract changed hands. It also said retention of the outgoing vendor's existing staff is the single biggest indicator of a transition without a disruption in services, and that it had already begun that effort and had spoken with facility management about any staff those managers did not want retained.

What happens next

The contract began October 1, 2026. The director of corrections committed on the record to a written 30-day report to the Commission, which fell due at the beginning of November 2026, and to quarterly reports from the county's monthly compliance meeting. The 901 Report has asked the county for a facility-by-facility vacancy count as of the handover date.

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