Report: Iowa ombudsman’s office handled 6,266 complaints last year

Iowa’s Office of Ombudsman, which investigates complaints related to local and state government, saw an almost 10 percent increase in cases opened during the last fiscal year.

The agency’s annual report, published this week, indicates that during fiscal year 2025, the office opened 6,266 cases — a 9.6 percent increase from the previous year.

The number of opened cases represents the second-highest total in the history of the office, and is 57 percent higher than what was recorded in 2014. The highest number of opened cases was in 2022, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still creating issues for government agencies and the people they serve.

The ombudsman’s office consists of 16 employees, a total that includes two administrative staffers.

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In the new report, Ombudsman Bernardo Granwehr said that “with such a big workload, we must be selective about the cases we choose to investigate.” He said the office is focused on prioritizing complaints and “as a result, we can better handle situations when we are called to do more with our finite resources.”

Granwehr credited the staff with building relationships with key employees of governmental entities across the state, which he said has made the office more efficient in its investigations and “increased the probability that state and local government officials will be receptive to our recommendations.”

With regard to the complaints dealing with state entities, the annual report shows that 56 percent of those cases involved the Iowa Department of Corrections, and 24 percent involved the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services.

In December 2024, the office published a public report, “Sitting in Place: A Re-Examination of Restraint Device Use and Regulations for Iowa’s County Jails.” While restraint chairs can serve a legitimate function in protecting inmates and staff, prolonged use and a lack of medical oversight can lead to injury. The report noted that some Iowa jails lacked written policies that aligned with state standards, while other jails failed to document the duration and justification for their use of the devices.

The Office of Ombudsman says it will continue to monitor restraint-chair use in county jails, but notes that the Department of Corrections has yet to complete “needed revisions to jail administrative rules.”

Among the cases highlighted in the annual report:

Medicaid MCO: In 2025, an Iowa resident complained that he had been receiving repeated phone calls from a managed care organization affiliated with the state’s Medicaid program. The calls were not only unwanted, they included confidential health information — such as test results — for other individuals the complainant didn’t even know. Despite the complainant asking the MCO to stop calling, the calls continued.

The man then complained to the ombudsman, noting his concern with not just the inconvenience he was experiencing but also the privacy violations and the fact that the intended recipients of the calls weren’t receiving critical information related to their own health. With the ombudsman’s intervention, the calls finally stopped.

Bureaucratic red tape: A South Carolina man informed the ombudsman’s office that for 15 years, he had been receiving erroneous tax bills from the State of Iowa. Each year, the man had complained to the state’s taxing agency where officials confirmed he owed nothing and assured him the matter was resolved — although the tax bills kept coming.

After the ombudsman’s office intervened, the erroneous billing was stopped. In its annual report, the ombudsman’s office noted the case “highlights the value of our office’s role in cutting through red tape and ensuring that agencies follow through on their commitments.”

Constitutional rights: A state prison inmate complained that his communication privileges were restricted for 90 days for unauthorized possession of contraband. The ombudsman found that under DOC policies, communication privileges could be restricted only “when evidence shows that communication was used for the introduction of any contraband into the institution” — and there was no indication of that occurring in the case at hand.

Although the ombudsman expressed its concern with the prison’s adherence to its own policies, the warden and deputy warden maintained the restriction was justified and so the restrictions remained in place for 90 days. “Our office maintains that while other forms of communication may be restricted, mail is not merely a privilege, it is a constitutional right,” the ombudsman observed in the annual report.

Delayed surgery: In 2025, a prison inmate complained about a long overdue surgical procedure to remove a bullet fragment from his arm. The ombudsman’s office investigated and found that while a surgery referral had been submitted to a hospital, no appointment had been scheduled and the referral was never processed.

“The oversight meant the inmate was left waiting for a medically necessary procedure with no timeline for resolution,” the office concluded. “Upon our inquiry, the hospital scheduled the surgery — months later than originally intended.”

Medical care in jails: The report includes two complaints that it said “underscore the importance of proper training and adherence to medical standards in correctional settings.” In one of the two cases, a county jail inmate complained that after he refused one of his prescribed medications, the jail staff informed him that refusing any single medication would result in a denial of all medications at that specific point in time. After the ombudsman’s office intervened, the jail administrator agreed to speak with the staff and review the jail’s medication policies.

In the second case, a county jail inmate noticed employees weren’t changing gloves after being exposed to bodily fluids from one inmate before they tended to other inmates. Noting that “this practice poses a significant risk of cross-contamination and violates widely accepted medical protocols,” the ombudsman raised the issue with the jail administrator, who confirmed the practice violated policy.

Editor’s note: Reporter Clark Kauffman worked for the Iowa Office of Ombudsman from October 2018 through November 2019.

This article was first published by Iowa Capital Dispatch.