National News
How many nursing home job applicants fail background checks?
June 27, 2014 posted by Steve Brownstein
Screening applicants for U.S. nursing home jobs may weed out out many people who have been convicted of crimes such as theft, battery and rape.
Terry Radcliff and colleagues make that case in an article published in the latest issue of the Journal of Elder Abuse & Neglect. The editors of the academic journal have posted that article and several others in front of their paywall this month.
Radcliff's team looked at results from a seven-state criminal history screening pilot program that started a total of 247,198 background checks. The screenings cleared 158,207 applicants immediately.
The program disqualified 7,463 of the applicants -- 3.7 percent of the total. About 19 percent of the withdrew from the screening program voluntarily.
The researchers speculate that some withdrew because they knew they would flunk the background screening.
