Next time you go out to eat, confident that Chicago health inspectors have given the restaurant a thumbs-up, you might want to reconsider.

A report out today by city Inspector General Joe Ferguson concludes that fewer than half of restaurants are inspected as often as city law mandates and U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines recommend. The odds that lower-risk establishments like bars have been inspected on time are even lower, less than 1 in 4, the IG found.

Ferguson did not find any direct evidence that public health has been compromised and said the agency in charge of inspections, the Chicago Department of Public Health, does a pretty good job of re-inspecting establishments that have been found lacking and of acting on citizen complaints.

Still, he termed the results of his office's audit "troubling"—not a word that patrons of Chicago's fine-dining establishments will want to hear.

The core problem, Ferguson concluded, is that CDPH has only 38 food-establishment inspectors, or "sanitarians." To do the job as laid out in city law, "at least 56 additional sanitarians" ought to be retained, he said.

"This audit revealed a curious and troubling landscape respecting an important government function critical to the protection of public health and safety," Ferguson said in a statement. "The city failed to provide CDPH with the resources it needs to meet the standards for food inspections, standards that the city itself adopted into its regulations. The result is long-term, continual noncompliance."

The law requires that inspections of high-risk establishments such as restaurants be conducted a minimum of twice a year. Medium-risk establishments such as grocery stores are supposed to be checked annually, and low-risk places such as bars once every two years.

In 2015, the year studied, only 43.9 percent of the city's roughly 8,000 restaurants were inspected twice. The figure climbed to a more impressive 80.1 percent for grocery stores but plummeted to 24.8 percent for bars in the 2014-15 period.

CDPH in the audit replies that it is doing its best to be more efficient and has made some progress, but conceded that "progress is yet to be made."

Another eyebrow-raising finding is that even if Chicago met its own standard, it would trail requirements in other big cities. For instance, in New York restaurants are supposed to be inspected every five months, the study says, with three visits a year mandated in Los Angeles and one every 72 days in Houston. Even Indianapolis calls for inspections as frequently as every four months.

Ferguson suggested that fees from restaurant licenses be used to hire more sanitarians rather than going into the city's general fund. He also asserted that some fees are too low, with restaurants paying $50 for a re-inspection that costs the city an estimated $103.84 to conduct.

Some of the money used for the inspections is provided by the state, which has not cracked down on city tardiness. We'll see if Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration hops on that one.

1:45 p.m. update:

You've got nothing to worry about, Chicago.

Says a spokeswoman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, in a statement:

“While we appreciate the inspector general's review, Chicagoans can have confidence that their food is safe because it was prepared in a sanitary kitchen, thanks to the work our health inspectors do to ensure restaurants and establishments across the city meet the health code. We are committed to keeping our restaurants clean and our residents safe from food-borne illnesses, despite the fact that we have long faced a lack of appropriate funding by the state to meet their own requirements.”