Auditor general finds material failures in Office of Recipient Rights; lawmakers press MDHHS for fixes

The Office of the Auditor General (OAG) told the Michigan House Oversight Committee that the Office of Recipient Rights' (ORR) efforts to protect recipients of public mental health services were "not sufficient," identifying eight findings in a performance audit — four material conditions and four reportable conditions.

Yvonne Benn, an audit division administrator with the OAG, told the committee the audit covered a 34-month period and included walk-throughs at all five state psychiatric hospitals, review of 240 randomly sampled complaints, and direct observation of ORR procedures. "We concluded ORR's efforts were not sufficient," Benn said.

Heidi Herendeen, the OAG supervisor for the project, described the material conditions. They included: deficiencies in collecting complaints (many complaints arrive via drop boxes that ORR collected only twice weekly, producing delays), untimely initiation and completion of investigations (the audit found nearly 30% of investigations were not completed within the 90-day requirement and an average completion time of 175 days), inconsistent date stamping (more than 10% of sampled complaints lacked date stamps), and monitoring failures including unreliable or missing…