Long Term Care Background Check Program Slow out of the Blocks

The long term care background check program has to date disqualified 3% of those who had applied. This was an initiative by federal government which provided grants to states. However the implementation of the long term care background check program has been slow to gather speed. This according to a governmental report. Those states that were in receipt of grants via the National Background Check Program have witnessed differing success levels. The Long Term Care background check program for Employees has been operating for around four years. The statistics have been confirmed Tuesday by The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.

The long term background check program has been disappointing. Especially when considering only six (Florida, Alaska, New Mexico, Michigan, The District of Columbia and Oklahoma) out of 25 states in receipt of grants responded. The six states submitted sufficient and substantive statistics to enable the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to calculate the effectiveness of the long term care background check initiative. Potential employees with dubious history should be flagged. However not having all the data available from all 25 states makes it difficult to piece together a true and accurate statement. Insufficient data has been put forward by eight states while eleven states have failed to submit data to date.

The long term care background check program seeks to partition implementation in to 3 milestones to reach in any order: Monitoring criminal history information continuously. Obtaining legislative authority to commence a program. While also detailed is the collecting of fingerprints. Out of the 25 states, Ten have not begun to collect fingerprints. Fifteen of the states have not commenced criminal history monitoring. Thirteen states have yet to enable the program by passing legislation. OIG had noted that some of these states did receive the grant belatedly and therefore had been restricted in passing legislation.

In order to fully integrate the long term care background check program OIG recommends CMS continues working with states. Reporting must be improved in order that the program’s goals can be accurately focused and determined. Commentary on what progress has been made (long term care background check program) can be found within the OIG’s 2016 Fiscal Year Work Plan.