Des Moines, Iowa — A review from the state auditor’s office shows just how much the state has been spending to care for mentally ill patients who’ve been residents of the state-run hospitals in Clarinda, Cherokee, Independence and Mount Pleasant.
Only two of those Mental Health Institutes are open today. Governor Branstad closed the M-H-Is in Clarinda and Mount Pleasant this summer.
According to the auditor’s calculations, it cost more than 160-thousand dollars a year to care for a resident in Mount Pleasant’s M-H-I. It cost about twice that much to care for a patient in the M-H-I in Clarinda. The state spent 440-thousand dollars per resident at the M-H-I in Independence.
Cherokee’s costs were highest, at more than half a million dollars per patient. However, the auditor’s report says that figure includes some of the out-patient services provided by Cherokee’s M-H-I, but the data wasn’t available to auditors to separate how much was spent on in-patient care and on out-patient care at Cherokee.
