Medical Staffing Agencies Should Review Background Check Policies

What if you were sick or injured, but found yourself being tended to by an inept nurse or caregiver? Would you feel comfortable knowing someone with a criminal record or a drug addiction was administering your medication or monitoring your vital signs? How about a family member or friend in that situation?

Disturbingly enough, a recent story in the Los Angeles Times revealed that individuals completely unqualified for positions in the nursing industry are being placed in care centers and hospitals by medical staffing agencies that require little in the way of background screenings and medical certifications. As a result, unqualified people are being signed up to provide care to some of the most vulnerable segments of the population.

A $4 billion dollar industry, agencies that specialize in staffing hospitals with temporary or contracted personnel find themselves engaged in a lucrative venture. Although there are many professional agencies that offer trusted and qualified personnel, others cut corners on background checks or forgo them altogether in the interest of keeping as many people in the field to earn as much money as possible. Often, the individuals who slip by have a variety of criminal charges both in and out of the medical industry.

The executive director of the Arizona State Board of Nursing, Joey Ridenour, agrees that there is a serious issue at hand which needs to be addressed: “I think it’s easier to hide in the registries. Some [firms] just sign them up.”

Firms have been found to have hired out nurses with past breaches of conduct such as ignoring patients, sleeping on the job, dereliction of duty, looting prescription drugs, theft of patient property, calling in illegal prescriptions, providing faulty or inaccurate medical information to doctors, erratic behavior, mental imbalance and more.

The list of off-duty conduct of many of these people is equally terrible. Charges ranging from DUI’s, carrying concealed weapons, assault with a deadly weapon, theft, and even prostitution are among some of the marks on individuals records that were turned up. The list provided by the L.A. Times reads more like the rap sheet of career criminals rather than the orderlies or nurses one would think would be approved to attend to the sick and infirm.

The nursing staffing industry nationwide is composed of an estimated 3,000-6,000 agencies nationwide. Standards run the gamut from publicly traded businesses and companies to individuals doing business out of their homes. There’s no real standardization at all for screening, backgrounds checks or verification of one’s eligibility to be a nursing practitioner. Bad seeds who can’t work anywhere else find easy opportunities to be rehired again and again by leapfrogging from one agency to another.

Nursing supervisor Sandra Thompson who is employed at Northridge Hospital Medical Center and Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley was quoted by the L.A. Times saying “A lot of them are really bad nurses. Sometimes I see them here at Northridge and and think ‘I wonder how long before I see them over at Sherman Oaks?’”

Compounding the issue is that health care institutions that are under budget and time constraints simply can’t double check the temps they are being presented with. Often the word of the agency has to be taken for what it is worth. And as mentioned before, a nationwide nursing shortage means that often a hospital is forced to work with the staff available to them. It’s like buying a used car on the spot without having a qualified mechanic take a look under the hood first.

The health care industry, which is literally vital to the well being of this nation’s population, needs to assert itself and address this problem. Otherwise, the entire system risks being undermined from within by unskilled, incompetent and criminal individuals placed there by equally uncaring individuals running these fly by night agencies. Perhaps individual states and the staffing industry could work together to develop standards with regards to background checks for employees working in this field.

What's on Your Background Check?

Do you know what's on your background check? Are you confident there is nothing on there that would prevent you from getting a job?

A common complaint among job seekers is that they apply for a job, have a great interview and then get are rejected after believing they were a top candidate for the position.

IAmScreened.com was developed to help job seekers find out what exactly is on their background check before they even go through the interview process. Since its inception in early 2009, IAmScreened.com has found that roughly 30% of its customers have found errors or criminal records on their background checks that they weren't aware of.

One customer had been trying to find a job for over six months and couldn't understand why he wasn't having any luck. Desperate, he turned to IAmScreened.com and ordered a full background check on himself. The results were shocking, yet most helpful. He discovered that the university he attended was reporting he did not earn a degree, but only attended school there. He said, "I can't believe that all this time, my potential employers thought I was lying on my application." He contacted his university and was easily able to get his information corrected. He was employed shortly thereafter.

IAmScreened.com offers three levels of background checks so customers can get exactly what suits their needs. Everything from criminal background checks to employment verifications is offered for a reasonable cost and these are the exact same checks an employer can request. Reports are normally returned to customers in one to three working days. IAmScreened.com also offers customer support to those who have issues or questions about their background checks.

Bus Driver with Criminal Record Leaves Disabled Person Stranded on Bus

Ed Wynn Rivera, a 22-year old man who suffers from cerebral palsy, was left stranded on a bus for 17 hours on New Year's Eve. Wynn is unable to speak or move on his own.

The bus driver, Walter Gibbs, is a employee of Outstanding Transport. He was only on his second day of the job when he left Rivera on the bus.

Outstanding Transport's website claims that their drivers are routinely background checked and have excellent driving records:

OTI's drivers are 19A Motor Vehicle Qualified. This means that they are randomly drug tested, fingerprinted, background checked and with no criminal background. They all have excellent driving records and must maintain them. OTI holds weekly safety/ training classes on site and requires every driver to attend these regularly.

That being said, Gibbs has been arrested 28 times. Charges he's faced have included forgery, grand larceny and drug crimes as well as having had his driver's license suspended 12 times in the past 12 years.

The owner of Outstanding Transport, Charlie Curcio, is refusing to comment.

Police sources stated that Gibbs will most likely not face charges for leaving Rivera on the bus. They have arrested the bus matron, Linda Hockaday and arraigned her on charges of reckless endangerment. She claimed that she was late for a music event at her church and assumed Gibbs would take Rivera home. Gibbs claimed that checking the bus for any passengers left on it was not part of his responsibility.

With all the blame going around, Rivera is currently being treated for hypothermia. Temperatures dropped to 15 degrees during his time in the bus. He is expected to make a full recovery much to his family's relief.

Whether or not you feel the bus driver shares any responsibility of this incident, the fact is that he clearly was not background checked properly. Making claims, but not following through can put people in jeopardy, especially for a company who busses the disabled and children.

You Have Some Explaining to Do, Mr. Mayor.

In Jeffersontown, Kentucky, Public Works Director, Joseph McMillan, was fired last week after being arrested for possession of crack cocaine. The arrest prompted the city council to take action and last night they voted unanimously to establish random drug testing for all city employees. The city council is also going to meet later this week to discuss implementing background checks on all employees.

McMillan was hired in January of this year by the Jeffersontown's mayor, Clay Foreman. The job application for the city does not ask if applicants have ever been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor. McMillan was already on probation for charges of DUI and criminal mischief when he was hired, which would have been uncovered by a simple, quick background check.

Mayor Foreman has been friends with McMillan for years but claimed he did not know about his criminal record. He noted that McMillan possessed a commercial driver's license and had experience in his family's construction business. Foreman said he hired McMillan because his family had done lots of work for the city over the years, dating back to the 1980's.

It has since been discovered that McMillan has been arrested nine times since 1985. Mayor Foreman fired him last Friday.

California Attempts to Ban Credit Reports for Employment Screening

The California State Senate is currently working on bill AB 2918, which will extremely limit the use of credit reports for pre-employment screening purposes. If passed, credit reports will only be allowed for positions which receive high compensation or for law enforcement positions in which employees will be working with or handling money.

This bill, if passed, will eliminate the ability of employers to check their employees' credit when hiring for positions that deal with the handling of money. This would include employees who would have access to cash, merchandise and clients' personal information, such as credit card numbers.

As it is not legal to use a FICO score to determine employment, pre-employment credit reports do not record that information. Rather, they give an employer the ability to see how a potential employee handles their finances, painting a picture of their responsibility and character. In addition, a pre-employment credit report does not deduct points from a person's credit score.

So why is California trying to ban this access?

Assemblywoman, Sally Lieber (D), introduced this bill on 02/22/2008. It went through its second reading in the Senate on 08/19/2008. Lieber's supporting argument was as follows:

"In the past, only banks and financial services companies routinely ran credit checks on potential employees. But employers in other sectors increasingly are including them in the screening process in an attempt to assess applicants' personality traits such as honesty and integrity. United States employers' use of credit checks increased fifty-five percent over the past five years, according to one recent study. This trend makes it harder for people who are laid off, newly divorced, or saddled with student loans to find full-time jobs. The employers' view may be that these people are irresponsible deadbeats, but there can be many contributing reasons such as identity theft or large medical bills. Credit reports were not designed as predictors of employability, and people who have thin credit files - students, young workers, the poor, the elderly - tend to be at a disadvantage because their reports do not predict how they will behave in the future."

The California Association of Licensed Private Investigators spoke in opposition of the bill:

"AB 2918 would prohibit the use of information which is pertinent to evaluating the trustworthiness, integrity, and responsibility of the individual. This is critical in situations where the person is being considered for a position where funds, personal information, and/or confidential business information will be involved. It is important to note that the information contained in a report issued to an employer by a credit bureau is different than the information contained in a consumer credit report that is used for an evaluation of the individual's creditworthiness. The report issued to employers does not contain FICO credit scores or account numbers. Some examples of situations where consumer credit report information is important are: retail and food establishments where the employees will be handling money, property management companies where the employees will be sent into residences, sometimes when the tenants are not home, as well as housecleaning services, hotels, motels, arid others, and parking lot attendants, who collect large sums of money with no supervision."

We spoke with Christopher Ballas, CEO of Backgrounds Online, who stated, "Any position within a company has the capacity to be a potential liability, from CEO to an entry level job. Why not allow employers, who in the end will bear the burden of the actions of their employees, to make sound and informed decisions? A pre-employment credit report is a valuable piece of information to employers that are looking to place the best candidate in the appropriate position."

Status, voting and the bill's history can be viewed here.