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A new version of a proposed state Senate bill aims to make sure that when nurses and other health professionals commit crimes, the Indiana agency that controls their licenses knows about it.
If the measure becomes law, nationwide background checks would be mandatory for all licensed health-care professionals -- and the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency would no longer rely on them to voluntarily report their own criminal activity.
Sen. Patricia Miller first indicated she planned to introduce a bill making background checks part of a nursing license application last month, after a Star investigation found nurses with criminal records practicing with valid Indiana licenses. On Monday, Miller called a news conference to announce her bill would be expanded.
Not only would it now apply to all health professionals -- physical therapists, nursing home administrators, acupuncturists, etc. -- but it also would create a system that would notify the licensing agency if any of those individuals commit a crime after receiving their licenses.
"As a registered nurse, I know the importance of having professional caregivers who are highly moral and ethical," Miller said in a prepared statement Monday. "It is essential that Indiana's public policy protect patients and do so at little or no cost to the state."
"This is big," said Robyn Grant of the statewide advocacy group United Senior Action, which has lobbied for background checks for licensed health workers. "I mean that's a big step forward."
Attorney General Greg Zoeller worked with Miller on the notification provision. The bill would require prosecutors to determine whether a person convicted is a health professional and, if so, to report that conviction to licensing officials, Zoeller's office said. Prosecutors most likely would be given access to the licensing agency's website to look up license holders.
"Rather than wait for the next time a background check is run, we will be able to respond in real time," Zoeller said. His office said the measure would cost the state little or nothing.
Miller said the entire bill would have little fiscal impact. License applicants would have to pay for their own national background checks, she said. Steve Johnson, executive director of the Indiana Prosecuting Attorneys Council, estimated that they cost $50 to $75.
Cost was the big reason state officials cited as to why Indiana is one of only a handful of states that currently do not require background checks of nursing applicants or nurses.
Robert Decker of Hoosier Owners and Providers for the Elderly, a nursing home trade group, welcomed the proposal.
He said his members sometimes don't find out when an employee commits crimes after being hired.
If the bill passes, it would most likely take effect in July.
Miller has not decided whether to include a provision that would require checks into the criminal histories of the 263,000 practicing Indiana health professionals who have never been required to undergo a background check.
The licensing agency would decide whether or how any information obtained from prosecutors or through background checks would affect a person's license -- just as it does now when license applicants volunteer information about their criminal histories, or when someone else brings a conviction to licensing officials' attention.
Miller's proposal could provide Hoosiers with some of the services Gov. Mitch Daniels passed up by opting out of a background check program recently created under new federal health-care legislation. Daniels' office said the state could not afford to participate in that program, which created an ongoing nationwide background check system specifically for nursing home workers.
Indiana still might miss out on one area covered by the federal program. The federal background program -- unlike Miller's proposal -- included the unlicensed health professionals, such as certified nursing assistants, who have the most contact with patients in nursing homes and other health facilities.
Indiana now has no way of notifying employers or licensing officials if a nursing assistant is convicted of a crime.
Although the law does require Indiana hospitals and nursing homes to perform pre-employment background checks on unlicensed workers, it asks for only a "limited" or statewide criminal check.
Because workers who steal from patients or divert drugs often hop from facility to facility and from state to state, patient advocates have called statewide checks inadequate.
But, Miller said, she is continuing to revise the bill, and the rules for unlicensed workers also could change
Call Star reporter Heather Gillers at (317) 444-6405.
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