AMES - The state Board of Regents was debating whether to ask the Legislature for permission to charge for or limit care to prisoners as costs to treat inmates soars.

The regents, who also serve as the Board of Trustees for University Hospitals in Iowa City, are making the move after a decade-long rise in the number of prisoners in the hospital's Indigent Patient Care Program.

They planned to make a vote on the resolution on Tuesday during their regular monthly meeting, which was held this month at Iowa State University in Ames.

Bill Hesson, associate director of University Hospitals, told the trustees Monday that care for Department of Corrections prisoners made up 5.1 percent of the indigent care program's costs in 1992. By the year ending June 30, the figure had risen to 12.7 percent.

In all, prisoners' care made up $11.6 million of the program's $65.2 million in charges last year. Meanwhile, state appropriations have fallen from $28.4 million in 1994 to $27.3 million this year.

Earlier this fall, the regents cut the indigent care program by $700,000.

In November, The Gazette reported that the ratio of inmates over age 50 in Iowa's prisons has more than doubled in the last 20 years and is expected to keep rising. The aging inmates' medical needs are straining state resources, the newspaper's report found.

Regent Mary Ellen Becker of Oskaloosa made the proposal that the regents ask the Legislature to allow University Hospitals to limit the number of Department of Corrections patients as long as lawmakers continue to make cuts in funding for the program.