Home Health & Hospice Week

Check your staff ’s credentials carefully, or you may end up in the headlines.

Case in point: A Texas woman has pled guilty to pretending to be a home health nurse, the Department of Justice says in a release. “Nora Nely Avila admitted that from January 2017 through December 2019, she impersonated a nurse and performed work she was not licensed to do at multiple hospitals and home health companies in the Laredo area,” according to the DOJ.

“These health care providers hired Avila after she fraudulently presented a nursing license of another individual,” the DOJ says. Avila faces sentencing in April.

But did the HHAs look close enough? Avila presented “the license number belonging to another nurse with the same first and last name, but with a different middle name” in one home health case, reports the Texas Board of Nursing on its website. And “the Board’s investigation revealed that the date of birth, social security number, and address information provided by Nora Nely Avila to the facility did not belong to any nurse having a license or privilege to practice nursing in the State of Texas.”

When hired for home health and hospice work, Avila often did not show up for visits, reports the Laredo Morning Times. Webb County Jail records show that Avila had three prior arrests on the charges of assault family violence, false report to police, and tampering with government records to defraud and theft, the newspaper says.