DENVER -- Legislators are calling for a new audit of the Colorado Mental Health Institute -- Pueblo after a CALL7 investigation raised questions about how the hospital records patients’ deaths.

Currently, the hospital only reports patients who died at the facility and not people who fell ill or were injured there but died at hospitals outside the institute.

The problem was highlighted in the case of Josh Garcia, 21, who died weeks after leaving the institute, but whose family charges he died because of his medication wasn’t monitored. Garcia became so constipated that his bowels burst and the medical examiner ruled it a “medical misadventure,” but Josh Garcia never showed up on the list of patient fatalities at CMHI.

“I think it would be important to find out what has happened with other patients, is Josh Garcia the only patient that has had this outcome,” said State Rep. Dianne Primavera, a Broomfield Democrat who chairs the Legislative Audit Committee. “People need to take a look at where the person's been, what their treatment's been if there is any correlations to what the final outcome was.”

Josh’s mother, who is suing the doctor and settled with Josh’s appointed attorney, said Josh wasn’t able to care for himself because he was too mentally ill.

“He was just not incoherent, and not stable,” said Bonnie Garcia. “He was delusional.”

A recent state audit found there were problems with the way CMHI was medicating patients, some of whom must be forced to take drugs by court order.

Patients “had not received appropriate treatment or monitoring, indicating that they may have been either unmedicated or undermedicated,” the audit said.

“I was upset when I read this audit last week about their lack of monitoring for their medications,” Primavera said. “With this population it is really important that their medications be monitored and that they receive the proper medication.

“We want to make sure this doesn't happen again in the future and whatever we can come up with to close some of these gaps is what is important to me as the chair of the audit committee,” she said.

Auditors will likely work to compile a list of patients going back several years who left the hospital and track what happened to them afterwards. The audit is expected to take several months.