California takes steps to probe nurses' criminal backgrounds

Effective immediately, the state nursing board will ask all nurses renewing their licenses whether they have been convicted of any crimes in recent years, said Carrie Lopez, director of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees more than 30 professional licensing agencies.

Many other states already require this information, according to the newspaper's investigation, a collaborative effort with the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica. Nurses in California must renew their licenses every two years.

The Board of Registered Nursing must also develop emergency regulations to obtain fingerprints from all nurses licensed before 1990. Fingerprinting has been required for nurses licensed since that year, allowing law enforcement agencies to flag the nursing board any time a nurse is arrested.

But until now, nurses licensed earlier -- about 40% of the active nurses in California -- had escaped scrutiny.

In written answers Friday to questions from The Times, Lopez said the new regulations would have to be approved by the state's Office of Administrative Law. She said she anticipated that all nurses who have not been fingerprinted will have to do so when renewing after March 1, 2009.

Lopez said she has also directed her staff to develop legislation expanding the requirement to other state licensing boards.

"We are taking swift action to provide additional consumer protections through all of our boards, including the Board of Registered Nursing," she said in a statement.

To support the new requirements, the state plans to reallocate staff to more closely scrutinize applicants, Lopez wrote. If necessary, she said, her agency will seek to hire additional investigators.

Former state Sen. Liz Figueroa, who oversaw professional licensing boards in the Legislature until 2006, called the department's response a "needed step."

"There's no sense in having the boards unless you're going to allow them to do the work," she said. "They just can't be out there issuing licenses unless you make them accountable and you have the tools to investigate."