Everybody it seems has heard the stories about people being taken to the hospital to find out later that they were robbed of a watch, cash, or jewelry. These stories are not urban myths, but the reality of being a patient. You can either die from some viral or staph infection or, if you are lucky, be relieved of your valuables.
Well according to an article in the Los Angeles Times there should be small wonder why. The article reports that few if any health care workers in California are checked for criminal pasts. The article contends that since the institutions do not have their employee’s fingerprints they can not run adequate background checks. This is only partly true of course, since you can run county criminal records checks on the name, date of birth and various identifiers other than fingerprints. Often the other background searches return faster than the fingerprint searches that are performed by the Department of Justice.
The consequences of not conducting proper preemployment screening is pretty obvious. There are numerous cases of theft, violence, sexual abuse, such novel approaches to health care. It would seem institutions would be concerned with database theft and the stealing of patient records and proprietary information. there have been numerous reports of these occurrences.
Additionally, it is questionable whether the health care providers run the OIG/GSA healthcare sanctions reports or whether they run adequate professional license verification reports. In al,l it is pretty amazing. In all, it is a whole bunch of lawsuits just waiting to happen. Probably, your health care costs will go up for no other reason than a propery preemployment screening program is not in place.
Remarkable. Really. check them oiut before you hire.
