As regular readers know all too well, ongoing mismanagement at Chicago's Public Health department is costing taxpayers a bundle. The agency's problems date back to 2007 when former director Dr. Terry Mason approved a plan to purchase a $16.1 million billing system from Cerner Corp. State officials warned early on that the system was causing major billing problems for the city's 12-clinic mental health system.  Those "glitches" never got fixed and the city lost millions in state funding as a result of under-billing the state Department of Human Services.

Worse yet, the system remains dysfunctional. As a result, the city failed to bill the state for $2.5 million in reimbursements over the past year alone.  This has resulted in 108 staffers being laid off and 4,000 patients shut out of care. Rather than coming clean on the broken system, the Daley administration first tried to cover up the billing problems by blaming the state. Some probing by the Chi-Town Daily News' Alex Parker revealed that the city's own faulty system was indeed culpable for letting millions of already-scarce health care dollars slip away. It's been eight months since Parker's investigation hit the web and the city still refuses to commit to a date by which the system will be working properly. Meanwhile, an obstinate Mayor Daley has refused to right the wrong by covering the multi-million shortfall for the coming year (even while providing $35 million in "token tax relief" to homeowners).

The lack of answers coming from City Hall is so puzzling that some mental health advocates believe there maybe there is more to the story.  Is the "inability" to fix the Cerner system really a plot to shutter the clinics? After all, the city is making an obvious effort to starve the system of local funding. Or is there something more sinister involved? Rumors from within the agency have surfaced suggesting that a Public Health department administrator has personal ties with Cerner employees, fueling suspicions that the contract was improperly awarded.

Last Friday, members of the Coalition to Save Our Mental Health Centers paid a visit to Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson's office in the hopes of getting some answers. They asked the IG to review the process that led to the contract. What will come of the complaint remains to be seen. All we can glean from the city's procurement records is that 13 companies submitted bids for the system. The IG's office told the coalition they will examine those bids and determine if an investigation is indeed warranted.

We'll be covering any further developments.