Recently a healthcare worker fired for stealing money from her patients found a new job at an assisted living facility. Why did her previous firing slip past the background check?
She didn’t just change jobs. She changed states. Her new employers confined their background check to information available in their own state’s registry.
All registries of healthcare workers have limitations. Some state registries ignore entire professions (California’s registry is one of the very few that includes hemodialysis technicians); states are allowed to put their own title on a healthcare role (personal care attendant, behavioral assistant and respite worker all refer to the same job); and a given state’s registry may not cover all healthcare settings. Moreover, not all registries contain information about criminal behavior, and not all registries track the same sort of criminal behavior. For example, some states have separate abuse registries listing healthcare workers tried for patient abuse; many do not.
Licensing requirements also vary by state, and there may be more than one certification or accreditation route for a single field. Some categories of healthcare workers may not require certification at all (for example, medical billing and coding staff). The rules change not only from state-to-state but also year-to-year.
Professional employment screening companies like Ars know which registries to check and how to interpret data from different sources. We keep up to date on current standards in the field and you reap the rewards with employees you can trust.
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