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In addition to mandating fingerprints, the board is now requiring nurses who renew their license to disclose whether they have been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony crime since their last renewal.
State officials are passing emergency measures to close a loophole that allows nurses with criminal convictions to go unnoticed by regulators.
The state Board of Registered Nursing voted unanimously Thursday to approve emergency regulations to begin fingerprinting all of its nurses. Ratification of the measure is pending.
A Tribune investigation published this month revealed that some 146,000 registered nurses and about 17,000 vocational nurses in California fall into a category that shields criminal activity from regulators. The problem stems from an exemption from being fingerprinted
The investigation found some nurses had criminal convictions — such as assault with a deadly weapon, child abuse, battery and driving under the influence with serious injury — that nursing regulators never learned about.
The Los Angeles Times, in conjunction with ProPublica, an investigative-reporting newsroom, also exposed cases of nurses who had multiple criminal convictions on their records and had delayed or no discipline.
Carrie Lopez, director of the state Department of Consumer Affairs, who oversees California’s two nursing boards, found the information disturbing and called such cases egregious examples of nurses falling through the cracks.
She is seeking statutory changes to allow all of the department’s boards and bureaus that fingerprint new applicants to fingerprint existing license holders.
“There has been a population of licensees that have been allowed to operate under the board’s radar,” said Lopez in a statement issued Thursday by the agency. “The people of California expect much more from our regulatory entities. Fingerprinting of licensees is an important tool to identify criminal behavior that may place consumers at risk.”
The state’s licensing system is designed to monitor nurses’ criminal records based on fingerprints taken when they are licensed. But for nurses licensed before 1990 by the Board of Registered Nursing and before 1997 by the Bureau of Licensed Vocational Nurses and Psychiatric Technicians, no criminal information is sent to regulators.
San Luis Obispo County has about 1,500 registered nurses who are not fingerprinted.
Before the Tribune’s investigation, regulators said they didn’t have the money or staff to fix the problem. Some said they didn’t see the errant nurses as a problem because there was no hard data to show that to be the case.
In addition to mandating fingerprints, the board is now requiring nurses who renew their license to disclose whether they have been convicted of a misdemeanor or felony crime since their last renewal. Convictions that have been expunged must also be reported.
The emergency measure to begin fingerprinting registered nurses must be approved by the state Office of Administrative Law before it becomes effective March 1, according to department officials. Nurses would have to be fingerprinted when they renew their licenses.
Criminal convictions uncovered during the new fingerprinting process would be investigated for regulators to determine whether disciplinary action is warranted, Lopez said in an e-mailed statement.
Eight new positions in the enforcement program have been approved to handle work generated from fingerprinting thousands of nurses, according to board documents.
Lopez said in an e-mail that costs incurred from fingerprinting the nurses would be covered by existing and new revenue.source
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posted by blogger @ 23:48
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