Nursing home rules relaxed
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
By Mary Massingale
Copley News Service
SPRINGFIELD - The Illinois Department of Public Health is backing off emergency rules calling for criminal background checks on all current nursing home residents.
The department enacted emergency rules in July to implement highly touted legislation intended to protect nursing-home residents from sex offenders and felons. But the rules put the nursing-home industry into an uproar, since all current residents would have to undergo a full criminal background check and perhaps fingerprinting - every six months.
The new proposed rules to implement House Bill 2062 call for criminal background checks only on new admissions to nursing homes. Public Health made the changes Tuesday after the emergency rules came under fire last month from a bipartisan legislative panel, the Joint Commission on Administrative Rules.
"Existing residents are a known quantity in the facility," said Enrique Unanue, Public Health's deputy director of health care regulation. "The staff knows the characteristics of those residents."
However, the requirement of a full criminal background check for the estimated 100,000 new admissions annually still rankles some nursing-home owners. They claim they already check new admissions against Internet databases maintained by the Illinois State Police and Illinois Department of Corrections.
"This is like using a baseball bat to kill a mosquito," said Terry Sullivan, executive director of the Chicago-based Illinois Council on Long Term Care.
"That's $1.6 million to find an additional five to 10 people among 100,000."
Story taken from the following website: http://www.pjstar.com
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