DETROIT – A state audit released in September exposed numerous failures in Michigan’s mental health hospitals.
Despite the findings, no compliance plan has been released to address the issues, leaving families upset and worried.
Now, a local lawmaker has introduced legislation to hold state departments accountable.
The auditor general spent years investigating the state’s mental health hospitals and released their findings in September, revealing many failures.
---> Audit finds protections for Michigan’s mental health patients ‘insufficient’
Typically, a compliance plan follows such an audit. However, it has been two months with no plan released to fix the issues, which has families upset and worried.
“They sweep and cover and sweep, you know,” said Natalie Anwar, a mother of two boys with autism.
Her children have spent hundreds of days in the state health care system over multiple visits. Like many parents, she has made complaints about her children’s treatment. Natalie says it was useless to stand up against the state. Her advice is to document everything “like their life depends on it, because it does.”
The state was previously criticized for holding an unannounced active shooter drill that terrified patients and staff in a child psychiatric hospital. The building was closed, the young patients moved, and soon after, an attack of one child on another in front of the staff occurred.
The auditor general’s audit released in September found eight key issues. Nearly 30% of complaints of abuse, neglect, injury, or death were not acted on until two to 12 days after being filed.
Training materials state the response should come within 24 hours.
Video and audio surveillance frequently was not working, and follow-up to patient complaints was past due. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) agrees or partially agrees with most of the findings.
---> What happens when a Michigan psychiatric patient reports abuse or neglect?
So what is the plan to fix the problems? Nobody knows.
“Current law states that the department, in this case, the Department of Health and Human Services, DHHS, has to respond and have a compliance plan to correct the failures that were in the Auditor General report,” said Sen. Michael Webber. “They have to respond within 30 days. It has now been over 70 days and they have not complied or put a compliance report together.”
Senator Webber is introducing legislation to hold state departments accountable.
“It won’t add fines, I just think the process of having to notify the legislature, notify the governor, notify the auditor general, so essentially notifying the public of not complying at that point will force further oversight from the legislature,” Webber said.
Currently, there is no concrete mechanism in state law to hold the department accountable. That is what Sen. Webber is trying to change. He wants a compliance plan submitted 60 days after an audit determines the department is failing to do its job.
What is MDHHS saying about this? The department’s spokesperson told Local 4 they feel an action plan is due by mid-January and they are waiting for approval for their corrective plan before submitting it.
As you can imagine, the families featured feel it’s just another delay tactic. They are simply talking about a plan to fix the problems.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services released the following statement to Local 4:
“To help address issues identified during audits, the MDHHS ensures corrective action plans are incorporated in the audit responses submitted to the OAG for publication in the audit report. Per MCL 18.1462(1) “Upon completion of an audit, the principal executive officer of a state agency which is audited shall submit a plan to comply with the audit recommendations to the state budget office. The plan shall be prepared in accordance with procedures prescribed by the state budget director.”
The State Budget Office (SBOs) documents the procedures within the attached Financial Management Guide (FMG) Part VII, Chapter 3, Section 100 on pages 7 and 8. Based on this schedule, the final corrective action plan letter is due approximately by Jan. 17, 2026. MDHHS is currently awaiting SBO’s Office of Internal Audit Services approval of our revised corrective action plan (step 4)."