State legislators in Kentucky seem willing to let protections for nursing home residents in the form of fingerprint background checks expire. At the same time, they’re refusing to set up any kind of registry for nursing home employees guilty of nursing home neglect.
Fingerprint background checks are the standard in most states including Illinois. Nursing homes in Illinois conduct fingerprint background checks on all new nursing home employees. At the same time, the Illinois Department of Public Health maintains a Health Care Worker registry that can be searched by anyone. The state of Illinois also requires that nursing homes conduct background checks for all residents who are admitted to the home.
Kentucky started instituting fingerprint background checks a year ago with a $3 million federal grant. Now that those funds are expended, the state is not willing to continue the practice even though, according to supporters of the programs, the funds ($40 per check) can be paid for by the nursing home or passed on to the applicants.
The State Government of Kentucky has also refused, for the fourth year in a row, to compile a registry of nursing home workers who have had a substantiated claim of nursing home abuse or nursing home neglect against them.
On this blog, we cover nursing home neglect and nursing home abuse. Many of the stories are based on investigations conducted by the Illinois Department of Public Health. I rarely include notices of failure to run background checks except when the failure to conduct the the checks leads to a person with a criminal record having contact with nursing home residents.
How effective these background checks are is difficult to determine. What isn’t difficult to determine is the fact that Kentucky abuts the southern half of Illinois.
Nursing home neglect and nursing home abuse including theft, assault, and physical and mental abuse are an epidemic across the entirety of the United States. If you were guilty of a crime against a nursing home resident in the state of Illinois, where would you go? Illinois? Or Kentucky?
If you have a loved one who you feel has been the victim of nursing home abuse or nursing home neglect in an Illinois nursing home, contact our Chicago nursing home lawyers for a free and confidential evaluation of your case.
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