Chicago's Mental Health Services Still in Jeopardy

By Prescott Carlson in News on Nov 6, 2009 10:20PM

While we've been lamenting things like the loss of the Outdoor Film Festival and the shrinking of the Chicago Christmas tree, there are certainly more serious issues at stake in the midst of the city's enormous budget deficit, one being the quality of mental health care in Chicago. The city's mental health centers have been in limbo since January when it was announced that some of the city's 12 centers would be closing, and while 4 of the centers were reopened, they still won't be avoiding a hit -- their operating budget is being reduced next year.

Staff has been shrunk by half to 108 from 216, and the clinics are only serving 8,000 patients, down from 12,000. The state says the 4,000 are being treated elsewhere -- perhaps in nursing homes.

Making matters worse, billing issues that resulted in the city losing some crucial state funds still haven't been resolved, which is something Ald. Ricardo Munoz took the city's health commissioner to task on at a recent budget hearing:

"That's a huge risk to take with this population, commissioner, in 18 months, to deal with a billing system, when we know what they're asking for and they know what we can provide," Munoz said. "I'm not a computer whiz, but I'm sure there are computer experts somewhere that can figure it out."

According to an internal memo that the Tribune managed to get its hands on, Health Department first deputy Matthew Beaudet told staff that fixing the billing system properly was "not doable at this time."