Following up on my previous postings about a joint Los Angeles Times ProPublica study on the breakdown in oversight of the nursing and healthcare industry, the Times has published another article, describing how inept nurses lose their license in one state and move to another. In some cases the nurses who move around have the legitimate capacity to obtain a license from a different state. There is either a lack of reciprocation where disciplinary actions or sanctions are concerned, or the new state licensing boards are claiming they are overburdened and short staffed due to economic downsizing, they do not have either the time or capability of running background checks on the new applicants.
Of course, as I indicated in my earlier posting, More California Registered Nurses Shown As Convicted Criminals this is a mistake and there needs to be a standardized system for conducting background checks and performance history on nurses and people in the healthcare industry. There are two major databases to retrieve information, concerning disciplinary actions against nurses. One if the federal Database, which the study claims is incomplete. The other is provided by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing. But with that database, submitting information about incompetent nurses is voluntary. Keeping in mind that States also earn much needed revenue by testing nurses, charging for licenses, etc. Nothing like an economic downturn to create in state and public services a systematic sequence of negligence and ineptitude that fails to monitor the healthcare industry, where there is another systematic sequence of negligence and ineptitude. The public, of course, ends up the loser.
Negligence is the word. There really are no excuses. Because it is sheer negligence if any public service agency, healthcare group, or staffing agency fails to conduct the Office of the Inspector General/Government Services Agency, OIG/GSA, Sanctions background check on its nurses. Or the FACIS Search, which includes the OIG/GSAHealthcare Sanctions Report as well as the 800 odd healthcare agencies in all fifty states who report disciplinary actions taken against anyone in the healthcare industry. Since Federal Funding is dependent on a healthcare facility not having anyone on its staff who is marked for disciplinary action on the OIG/GSA, this would seem like a no brainer. But there are temp staffing groups who staff nurses to private healthcare services or to individuals, and apparently they manage to avoid running the sanctions reports.
Thanks to the joint study from the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica, there is an increase in public awareness a about the terrible state of the healthcare industry with respect to background checks and public safeguards. Some states are already responding and initiating renewed efforts to monitor their nurses and healthcare professionals. It’s just a shame it has taken so long.
