Many California health workers not checked for criminal pasts
The Department of Consumer Affairs estimates that nearly a third of the state's 937,100 licensed healthcare workers have not been screened through fingerprinting.
California's failure to check the criminal backgrounds of health professionals extends well beyond nurses, encompassing tens of thousands of doctors, dentists, psychiatric technicians and therapists.
The Times reported this fall that regulators had not vetted about 195,000 of the state's registered and vocational nurses, exposing patients to caregivers with histories of violence, addiction, predatory behavior or corruption.
Prompted by those articles, the state Department of Consumer Affairs has identified 104,000 more professionals from all levels of medical care to add to that tally.
All told, the agency now estimates that close to a third of the state's 937,100 licensed healthcare workers have not been screened through fingerprint checks.
Licensing boards maintain inconsistent rules about who must be fingerprinted and when. Fingerprints are the primary tool that regulators can use to root out convictions and allow law enforcement agencies to automatically alert regulators if a licensee has ever been arrested.
Those who have not been fingerprinted include almost three-quarters of psychiatric technicians; nearly half of family therapists, social workers and dentists; and 12% of physicians.
"We depend on the state of California . . . to screen out those who are incompetent or impaired or dishonest or otherwise unqualified," said Julianne D'Angelo Fellmeth, administrative director of the Center for Public Interest Law at the University of San Diego. "If the state doesn't do that for whatever reason, we're all in trouble."
After the reports by The Times, which collaborated with the investigative news organization ProPublica, the state Department of Consumer Affairs moved quickly.
Agency Director Carrie Lopez ordered the 20 health-related boards and bureaus she oversees, including the Medical Board of California, to collect fingerprints from any licensee who had not provided them.
She also told the agencies to begin asking licensees whether they had been convicted of a crime since their last renewal. Other states' boards, including those in Arizona and Texas, already do that.
Lopez urged regulators to more quickly pursue professionals who may pose a danger to the public.
"I have and fully intend to make use of all resources to ensure that we remove threats to the public safety and well-being of Californians," Lopez said in a written statement.
