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Seniors Should Be Checking Out Their Healthcare Assistants

Background Checks Help Protect Elderly
By KEVIN FREKING

WASHINGTON –

About 5,000 applicants for jobs caring for the elderly have been rejected after background checks disclosed criminal records or a history of abusing patients.

The results, compiled by the Senate Aging Committee, represent lawmakers’ first efforts at evaluating a pilot program, used in seven states, that was designed to reduce cases of people preying on the elderly.

Congress approved the program in 2003. It gave the selected states the seed money – $16.4 million in all – to beef-up their background checks for workers who care for the elderly, primarily nursing home staff. Now, some lawmakers believe the findings justify expanding the program nationally.

“It’s helped identify thousands of people who should not be working in nursing homes,” said Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., chairman of the Senate Aging Committee. “Every facility that hires these people should have that information available to them.”

Nursing home workers in every state are subject to some type of background check. But federal investigators describe the overall effort as a patchwork system – one filled with dangerous gaps.

For the entire article go to Forbes.com

Corra has had a lot of requests lately to check out health care assistants. Since we conduct all types of searches in the health care industry, be it for health care staffing agencies or actual medical facilities, this seems to Corra like a national progression.

A variety of assisted living and nursing homes are demanding that the residents conduct background searches on their health care assistants, before allowing them to work in their facility. Concerned children conduct these health care searches on behalf of their children.

For health car packages, Corra recommends at least the criminal background check and social security trace. If it is a health care professional, we recommend the OIG/GSA, or health care sanctions report. If the assistant is driving, then we recommend the MVR Report.

Be safe. In the short and long run, background searches are cost effective. In any industry.

Check them out before you hire.

By Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive and has worked in the entertainment industry, the financial, health care and technology sectors. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic sexuality in the late twentieth century. He is the author of the Constant Travellers and has recently completed a new book, The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.