Ask Kaci Barber how her day is going, and the answer comes quickly: “It’s been busy.”
“Serving as a Mental Health Discharge Planner, with a transition from the hospital setting into correctional healthcare, has reinforced the critical role of empathy and the profound impact mental health clinicians have at the forefront of patient care. Practicing within this setting has further refined my understanding of the complex needs of an often-underserved population, particularly during pivotal moments of transition and reentry."
On any given week, the Mental Health Discharge Planner at the Lee County Jail in Fort Myers, Florida, is fielding medical questions, processing health-insurance applications across two facilities, working in a medication-assisted treatment (MAT) program, and helping incarcerated patients build a plan for the day they walk out the door.
Kaci spent 16 years working in hospitals before joining Team NaphCare, and she understands what it takes to keep doing this work for the long haul.
Sixteen Years, and the Courage to Change
Before NaphCare, Barber spent 16 years with Lee Health, the region’s sprawling hospital system. She moved through nearly every corner of it — the emergency room, a skilled nursing unit, memory care, and discharge planning.
“I love to learn,” she says. “At some point, I’ve worked a little bit everywhere within the hospital.”
Kaci cares deeply for her patients, and some hospital environments were heavier than others. For nearly two years, she worked closely with children and their families during the worst moments of their lives, and as a mother herself, she found the line between work and home increasingly difficult to hold.
She tells the story of a supervisor who once criticized her after finding her with tears in her eyes, consoling a grieving mother who had just received devastating news. She was told she needed to stay composed.
“But that’s my way of showing compassion,” Barber recalls thinking. “Sometimes your body can’t control that tear rolling out of your eye.”
That was the moment she realized she needed a change.
When a friend who worked at NaphCare as a nurse mentioned an opening that aligned with her social work degree, Barber was intrigued.
A Slower Pace, a Deeper Reach
Her first question was about pace. Hospital work, especially in the ER, was fast and, for many years, exhilarating.
“It used to be action-packed and fun-filled,” she says. “Now it’s like, okay, I want to slow down a little bit. I want to dig more into how I can help long-term.”
That is exactly what the new role has given her. Although a jail stay is often short, the time she has with a patient can be spent looking past the immediate crisis.
“It gives you the opportunity to dig more into a person’s past, their barriers, their medical conditions, and then their future barriers. Are they going to be able to get their medication? Are they going to have somewhere to go? What can we do to make sure they don’t come back?”
It is the discharge-planning instinct she honed at the hospital, now aimed at reentry.
“When I get them, it’s: what’s your plan when you get out of here?” she says.
The difference between leaving with a plan and leaving without one, she notes, can be the difference between recovery and a return to the street.
What the Work Actually Looks Like
Roughly 90 percent of Barber’s day is spent speaking with patients one-on-one and helping them access resources through community partners and programs, such as an ACA-based program for incarcerated individuals that offers free health coverage. Once enrolled and employed after release, participants can carry comprehensive health coverage that includes prescriptions, rehabilitation, and mental health care, with the option to add dental and vision. For many of the people she meets, it is the first time they’ve had real health coverage.
“A lot of these people will get health insurance and be able to continue treatment after release,” she says. “They just never had anybody to help them sign up on the street.”
She also works with the facility’s medication-assisted treatment (MAT) program, reviewing prescription histories, ordering EKGs and screenings, securing consent, counseling patients on what the program can and cannot do, and ensuring those who qualify are connected to a community MAT provider when they leave. And she has joined the facility’s reentry team, where her social work background and network of community resources come together.
A patient worried about what’s next usually leaves a conversation with Barber holding a specific plan: the name of a social worker at the public library two blocks away, the address and phone number, a bus ticket, or a clear next step to get re-enrolled in Medicaid. She now works directly with the public defender’s office, helping coordinate cases in which an individual can be insured and placed in an inpatient rehabilitation bed rather than remaining in jail.
“It all comes together, and I love that.”
What Surprised Her
Barber will admit she was nervous when she walked in on her first day. She expected corrections to be more dramatic, even a little frightening. Within a week, the opposite proved true.
“I felt so much safer than I expected,” she says. An officer is always nearby when she sees a patient, which gives her room to focus entirely on the person in front of her.
Just as unexpected was the rapport.
“The patients treat medical staff so much better than I expected, because we’re there to help them, and they know that.”
She credits the social worker in her for much of the rest. Kaci is proud that she’s been able to reach patients that others hadn’t been able to connect with.
“You just have to be calm, welcoming, and warm. It’s all in the tone, your patience, making sure they understand who you are and what you’re trying to do.”
The First Point of Care
Spend any time with Barber and a larger truth comes into focus: for many of the people she serves, a correctional facility is the first place they have ever received care.
“A lot of them have never been to a doctor,” she says.
Conditions surface on routine X-rays and ultrasounds, high blood pressure, illnesses no one had ever named, simply because no one had ever looked.
In Southwest Florida, she says, the shortage of housing and services for people experiencing homelessness means the burden often falls, by default, on hospitals and jails. She has watched patients with nowhere else to go return again and again in both settings. That reality is exactly why the plan she builds at discharge matters so much, and why she pushes so hard for enrollment, coverage, and community connections before anyone walks out the door.
The empathy that once made hospital work unsustainable has, in this setting, become Barber’s greatest professional strength. It is the very thing that lets her reach patients when others couldn’t.
Improving Lives Inside the Facility and Beyond
Today, Barber describes her work with passion and a deep connection to NaphCare’s mission to improve and save lives in corrections. She shared the following reflection through social media, and it captures, better than any summary could, what she brings to Team NaphCare:
“Serving as a Mental Health Discharge Planner, with a transition from the hospital setting into correctional healthcare, has reinforced the critical role of empathy and the profound impact mental health clinicians have at the forefront of patient care. Practicing within this setting has further refined my understanding of the complex needs of an often-underserved population, particularly during pivotal moments of transition and reentry.'"
“By integrating compassion with clinical expertise and comprehensive discharge planning, I facilitate continuity of care and support each individual’s successful reintegration into the community following incarceration. I am committed to establishing a foundation of trust, dignity, and equitable access to high-quality mental health services — advocating for each patient while promoting stability, safety, and sustained long-term outcomes as a proud member of Team NaphCare.”
