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Check Out What’s Happening in Michigan

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According to this August 10, 2006 article in the Detroit Free Press, six individuals in Michigan were charged with falsifying their criminal records in employment applications to four separate skilled nursing facilities. One of the accused is a licensed practical nurse. Scary? Yes! Michigan law bars felons from employment in nursing facilities for fifteen years for a felony charge and ten for a misdemeanor. And another law just passed in April makes it criminal for a facility not to check employee fingerprints and criminal records. Trouble is, as pointed out in a June 2005 article in Senior Journal, Michigan has seen these issues before—the article states that 10 percent of employees in Michigan skilled nursing facilities have criminal backgrounds. That was three years AFTER the first law barring criminals from nursing home employment took effect.

So the trouble becomes—how can we effectively expunge criminals from working at skilled nursing or other long-term care facilities? And make sure they don’t get hired in the first place? Also, is it the state’s job or the nursing facility’s to check for a criminal record? Do we need to penalize the nursing facilities who aren’t doing the checks? If so, how?

Posted in: Editorials

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