AUSTIN, Texas -- The Texas prison board has approved a $46.8 million deal to lease a handful of beds at a hospital in Huntsville.

The arrangement ratified Friday by the prison board meeting in Austin covers only nine beds at Huntsville Memorial Hospital. However, it's the first time the Texas Board of Criminal Justice has gone outside university health care providers to award a contract for inmate medical treatment.

Prison agency officials are promising to look elsewhere and negotiate on their own.

The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston is balking at continuing a nearly two-decade-long deal to treat prisoners because it's costing tens of millions of dollars in unanticipated losses.

Board member J. David Nelson calls it "a landmark step" in reducing health care costs to prisoners.