Lopez also said a nursing board official erred last week in saying legislative approval might be required to ask nurses renewing their licenses about convictions.
The board, she said, "has and has had the authority to require applicants seeking renewal of their license to identify whether they've been convicted of a crime."
The question will be included on applications beginning this month. Anyone seeking an initial license is already asked about convictions.
Lopez said she will step in if the nursing board fails to protect the public.
The nursing board "is a semi-autonomous board, and I fully expect them to carry out their mission to protect consumers independently," she said.
"Nevertheless, they are under the jurisdiction of my department, and as director I have the authority to issue edicts to our boards when I am alerted to a problem that could leave vulnerable Californians in the hands of criminals."
The Times reported Sunday that it found more than 115 cases since 2002 in which the nursing board failed to act against nurses' licenses until they had racked up three or more convictions.
In 24 cases, nurses had at least five convictions.
The newspaper and ProPublica also found cases in which the board never acted against nurses convicted of sex offenses and Medicare fraud.
At least one nurse is currently in prison; another was able to renew his license from there for years after being convicted of attempted murder.
The California Nurses Assn., the union representing about 65,000 nurses in the state, said this week that it supports criminal checks for all nurses.
"We have always supported background checks on healthcare workers," said Jill Furillo, the union's Southern California director.
"There should be uniform standards. It sounds to me like there have not been," she said.
California licenses 343,000 active registered nurses, the largest number in the nation.
Hospitals and clinics rely on the website of the Board of Registered Nursing, in part, to check out job applicants. All official accusations and disciplinary actions are posted there for public review.
To gather information about the criminal records of the state's nurses, reporters reviewed stacks of nursing board files and court pleadings, consulted online databases and newspaper clippings and conducted interviews with nurses and experts in several states.
All accusations filed and disciplinary actions taken by the board since 2002 -- more than 2,000 in all -- were analyzed.
Among the offenses were misdemeanors and felonies ranging from petty theft and disorderly conduct to assault, embezzlement and bail jumping. One Redding nurse was convicted 14 times from 1996 to 2006 before the board filed an accusation against her.
In some cases, The Times and ProPublica found out about convicted licensees by comparing government databases -- including a list of sexual predators required by Megan's Law -- with the names and addresses of registered nurses in the state.
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charles.ornstein @propublica.org
tracy.weber @propublica.org
