according to this practice, for a prisoner to receive treatment, he/she has to write an application for medical services and hand the application in to the controlling officer on duty. The controlling officer collects such applications during the day and files them with the establishment’s chancellery where the applications get registered and get sent to the doctor of that establishment 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 37 445 medical consultations during 2015. Positive assessment shall be given to the fact that the number of such consultations is increased in comparison to 2014166. The number of medical consultations issued monthly is between 2210 and 4276. The study of the visits of specialist consultant doctors to the penitentiary establishments revealed that in some of these establishments frequency and regularity of such visits is not sufficient. Medical documentation remains a problem in prison. It should be noted that in general, the medical files of prisoners are not unified, which creates the danger of loss of medical records. Also, in some cases, the record indicates neither the identity of the doctor-consultant to the prisoner, nor the time of consultation. The enrolment of prisoners for consultation is recorded in the journal of the consultation, however, dates appear nowhere in the recording and therefore, it becomes impossible to determine how long the prisoner had to wait for consultation. It should also be noted that in general, all the prison medical units have the consultation records journal, although it is not the form approved by the Minister of Corrections, which would be uniform and created following the uniform rules for all the establishments. Therefore, it is necessary to approve a single special form, indicating the patient’s name, date of request of consultations (as well as the identity of the person who determined the need for consultation), the specialist doctor the inmate wishes to consult and advice and recommendations after the receipt of such consultation, with the date specified. The monitoring demonstrated that at the establishment N12 the prisoner G.N. was enrolled for consultation with a dermatologist, but after the whole month the patient was still waiting for consultation of a dermatologist. Dental care is also a problem in prisons. Dentist does not have an assistant, and often has to service 25-30 patients daily. The orthopedic services function with certain defi166 In 2014 specialist doctors had held 30 726 consultations. NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM (NPM), 2015 99