Home Health & Hospice Week

Many nursing home aides with findings of neglect, abuse, or theft have previous criminal history, OIG finds.

Every week across the nation, news stories pop up about home care aides stealing from or abusing their patients. Participating in federal background checks for aides may save your agency that grief and embarrassment, shows a new study.

The HHS Office of Inspector General re-quested FBI criminal background checks for nursing home aides who received substantiated findings of abuse, neglect, and/or misappropriation of property during 2010, it says in a new report. Nineteen percent of aides with substantiated findings had at least one conviction in their criminal history records prior to their substantiated finding, the OIG reports. Among those aides, the most common conviction (53 percent) was for crimes against property (burglary, shoplifting, and writing bad checks).

Home care providers may see similar patterns, experts suggest.

The OIG conducted the aide study to establish a baseline before implementation of the Afford-able Care Act-approved background check program for direct care long-term care workers, it notes. Nine-teen states have received grants so far to participate in the background check program, which is voluntary.

OIG investigators also found correlations between the substantiated findings and the types of crimes turned up by the background checks. "Aides with substantiated findings of either abuse or neglect were 3.2 times more likely to have a conviction of crime against persons than nurse aides with substantiated findings of misappropriation, and nurse aides with substantiated findings of misappropriation were 1.6 times more likely to have a conviction of crime against property than nurse aides with substantiated findings of abuse or neglect," the OIG explains.

The report is at https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-07-10-00422.pdf.