doctor later. Only in urgent cases will the controlling officer deliver an application for medical services to the chancellery immediately. It is unclear, however, how a prison controlling officer who does not have medical knowledge will evaluate whether or not an individual prisoner’s medical condition is urgent. The above-described procedure constitutes an additional barrier in the process of provision of healthcare services in prison and a breach of the principle of confidentiality. We therefore believe that the above-described practice needs to stop immediately. According to the information received from the Medical Department of the Ministry of Corrections, invited doctors issued 30,726 medical consultations during 2014. The number of medical consultations issued monthly is between 2,000 and 3,500. Below we describe some examples of common problems revealed by the Special Preventive Group during its monitoring at several penitentiary institutions in regard to timely availability of invited doctors. The monitoring has shown that the invited doctors are not visiting the penitentiary institutions regularly and frequently. Thus, in the institution no. 3, an echoscopy specialist last paid his/her visit on 1 October; by 23-23 October, 12 prisoners were awaiting his/her next visit. A urologist visited the Institution on 14 august and 10 prisoners were waiting for him/her since then. An X-ray specialist was in the Institution on 16 September and 34 prisoners were awaiting his/her next visit. A proctologist’s last visit dates back to 8 September and 2 prisoners were in queue for his/her consultation. In the Institution no. 2, a patient wore the Ilizarov frames on his left shank to keep his broken bone fixated for as long as 2 months. Despite the fact that, according to the medical record entered on 1 September 2014, it was necessary for the patient to see a traumatologist, no services were provided even after 2 months. The same patient had been X-rayed a week before but did not know the result of the X-ray. As our monitoring at the Institution no. 14 showed, prisoners enlisted for an appointment with invited doctors have to wait for extended time periods to see the doctor. This contradicts the standard of timely provision of healthcare services. Some examples from the Institution no. 14 are described below: •• One patient complained to us that he had been waiting for an endocrinolo- gist’s consultation for 5 months already with no avail. Endocrinologists are not visiting the institution at all. •• A patient who was in the medical unit because his wound opened after the surgery was waiting for a surgeon’s consultation for 2 weeks. •• A patient was put on the list awaiting an appointment with a specialist on 6 September but the relevant journal (log) does not contain any information about provision of consultation by the doctor. •• A patient suffering from a hemorrhoidal disease has been enlisted for an appointment with a doctor on 16 September 2014 but no records of consultation rendered by the doctor can be found in the documents. 94 NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM OF GEORGIA