A panel of legislators grilled the state official who was dispatched to defend Governor Branstad’s proposal to close the state-run Mental Health Institutes in Clarinda and Mount Pleasant.
Rick Shults, the director of mental health and disability services for the Iowa Department of Human Services, testified before a budget subcommittee yesterday(Thur).
Representative Dave Heaton, a Republican from Mount Pleasant, says the costs for caring for patients with acute mental illness are much higher at the Cherokee and Independence Mental Health Institutes, which will remain open.
Heaton says there aren’t enough “psych beds” in private facilities in southern Iowa and closing the two state-run facilities makes things worse.
Senator Joe Bolkcom, a Democrat from Iowa City, says he doubts the agency’s claim that many patients who’re now being served in the state’s Mental Health Institutes can easily find care from private providers.
Other legislators say they’re fielding complaints from county sheriffs, who are often responsible for transporting patients to the Mental Health Institutes. Representative John Forbes, a Democrat from Urbandale, says it will be a 500-mile round trip for some departments.
Shults, the D-H-S administrator, counters that many hospitals around the state provide in-patient treatment for severe mental illness, plus he says the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and Broadlawns Hospital in Des Moines will be able to take some patients who would have been sent to the state-run facilities. The D-H-S expects to shift the elderly sex offenders who’re in 24-hour nursing care in Clarinda to private nursing homes.
A court ruling is expected in late February on whether Governor Branstad had the authority to close the Iowa Juvenile Home in Toledo last year. If that ruling goes against Branstad, legislators say that will dramatically alter the discussion about closing the Mental Health Institutes.
