News 8 investigation prompts lawmaker to seek tighter controls on criminal caretakers

Part 3

DALLAS -- A state lawmaker is calling for tighter controls on nursing home aides after a News 8 investigation revealed that the state has certified hundreds of them with serious criminal histories.

State Rep. Bill Zedler, R-Arlington, who sits on the Texas Legislature's Public Health Committee, said he wants a thorough FBI background check done before nurse aides are certified.

“If we do the FBI background investigation,” Rep. Zedler told News 8, “Health and Human Services, which handles the certification for nurse aides, would get a monthly print out – ‘Here are the people that violated the law.’”

A News 8 investigation revealed that state health officials are only required to do a less-thorough state background check when initially certifying aides, and no new checks for re-certification.

“Y'all perform a very important service because a lot of times, you don't know you have a problem until somebody brings it to your attention,” Rep. Zedler said.

A WFAA analysis of government data showed that abuse in Texas nursing homes is nearly four times the national average, and a broken system is largely to blame. Our six-month long investigation uncovered how violent criminals are often left to care for some of our most vulnerable.

After our stories aired last month, Emily Bailey said they sounded all too familiar to her.

“I hate how the elderly are treated,” said Bailey, a certified nurse aide. “I hate how the workers are treated.

“I would never put my own grandmother in a nursing home because of the stuff I've seen,” she said.

“Nobody ever really talks about, from an aides point of view, what's really going on in most of these facilities.”

She said not only are nurse aides with a history of abuse often left to care for the elderly, but bad behavior often is ignored.

“You knew they were doing drugs,” she said. “You knew that they were drinking. But sometimes these facilities just swept it under the rug because they came, not sober, but were still able to do their job.”

Our investigation found that nurse aides like James Pruitt are flying under the state’s radar. On the state’s nurse aide registry, his certificate is clean, meaning he’s eligible to work in a nursing home.

But by state law, he shouldn’t be.

Court records show Pruitt was convicted of assault last year after he choked and pushed his girlfriend down a stairwell.

But state regulators don't know that, because no one is doing routine background checks.

Right now in Texas, nurse aide applicants get a one-time background check through the Texas Department of Public Safety as part of the initial certification process. Zedler said an FBI background check would not only be more thorough, but it would catch nurse aides like Pruitt who rack up convictions long after they're first certified.

Former nursing home administrator Susan Hodges said nursing homes would have a hard time hiring people if controls are tightened.

She said she’s not opposed to stricter controls, but notes that the state set the bar low for a reason.

“I do not believe that you can have an employee pool to pull from except that group of people that, for some reason …. can't get a better job,” Hodges said. “So that's the type of people you're really going to get in this type of situation.”

That’s because the job is tough and dirty, Bailey said.

“We're overworked,” she said. “We are stressed out mentally.”

“You're basically a certified butt cleaner,” she added. “You clean up poop, you clean up pee day in and day out.”

And the pay?

“I'm sorry, but it's crap -- between $8.50 up to $10 dollars an hour,” she said. “I would rather work at McDonald’s instead of work as a CNA ever again.”

It all adds up to a job few qualified workers are willing to do, and an industry that hires criminals in order to keep their businesses running.

“The state may have to end up putting more money into the program,” Zedler said.

Zedler said that if he can’t get reform of the nurse aide program done through regulatory changes, he told News 8 he will file new legislation next session. 

Full Article & Source:
News 8 investigation prompts lawmaker to seek tighter controls on criminal caretakers

Criminal Caretakers: Hundreds of certified aides with criminal histories working in nursing homes

Part 2

A six-month WFAA investigation found nearly 200 aides certified to work in North Texas nursing homes have serious or violent criminal histories.

Maybe most troubling, WFAA found that many certified nurse aides (CNAs) with criminal histories work in nursing homes legally.

But WFAA also found other CNAs who have been convicted of crimes that should make them ineligible to work, yet slipped through the regulatory cracks -- and continue to remain state certified and employable.

The WFAA review found CNAs with arrests for crimes that include the following: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon; continuous violence against family; injury to a child; abandoning a child; aggravated robbery; aggravated sexual contact with a child; and burglary.

The WFAA analysis also, in a review of federal complaints, found Texas nursing homes with an abuse rate four times the national average.

• EXCLUSIVE: SEARCH WFAA'S NURSING HOME VIOLATIONS DATABASE

For advocates of the elderly, it’s disturbing.

“It's not okay,” said Cortney Nicolato, chief executive officer of the Senior Source, a Dallas nonprofit that conducted nearly 5,000 nursing home visits last year to ensure residents were free from signs of abuse. “Organizations like ours bust our chops every day to make sure that older adults are being protected. We need the entire community doing the same.”

So, why is that not happening on behalf of the state’s 92,000 nursing home patients?

Because there are three major oversight flaws, according to the WFAA findings.

Loophole 1: Inadequate initial background checks

The first involves the initial certification.

The state requires DPS to conduct a criminal background check prior to an applicant being certified. That’s different from Texas requirements in other industries, for example, like child daycare in which a national background check using fingerprints is required.

The WFAA review found the DPS checks apparently fail to uncover various state convictions. That’s resulted in nurse aide applicants getting certified, though they should be barred for life.

Like Tiffany Simons, Daniel Badger and Johnny Lacy.

All three were convicted of crimes that should have prohibited them life from becoming CNAs.

Yet, they went to prison, got out, and then became certified.

None would talk to us on camera.

Loophole 2: No background check on re-certification

A second flaw appears in the re-certification process. The state requires a nurse aide to get re-certified every two years, yet does not require regulators to re-check a CNA’s criminal background.

Instead, any further background checks fall to the nursing homes.

WFAA found individuals who commit crimes that should bar them from work – and have their certification pulled - yet remain certified and employable.

CNAs like Corwin Harrison, for example, gained his certification from the state in 2003. But after initially being certified, he was later convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for attacking his girlfriend with a large kitchen knife and trying to choke her, according to court and prison records.

The conviction for the crime should have barred Harrison - like other CNAs we found – for life from working as a CNA.

Although Harrison spent a year-and- a-half in prison, in 2012 and 2013, he got out and worked as a nurse aide from 2014 to 2016, state employment records. He even renewed his certificate in 2016.

Harrison backed out of an interview request, but told us he continues to work as a nurse aide – though in private care. He acknowledged having a criminal past – though did not discuss his specific crimes. He said any prior criminal past does not necessarily affect one’s work.

Loophole 3: Deferred adjudication probation

The third and most common loophole WFAA found is buried in the state's regulations. It says if you commit a serious or violent crime, you are eligible to become a CNA as long as you don’t have a “final conviction.”

That means a nurse aide can commit a serious or violent crime, gain deferred adjudication, and successfully fulfill the terms of their probation, to avoid a “final conviction.” The individual, though often pleading guilty to a serious or violent crime to gain probation, remains eligible to be a CNA.

We found dozens of nurse aides who pleaded guilty to violent crimes. But since they got probation, the law allows them to go back to work.

Tambra Wright is one of them. She pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for trying to run someone over with her car.

“I don’t have any convictions of any felonies,” she told WFAA as she was about to clock in at her job at a local nursing home this month.

That’s true. She got deferred adjudication and granted eight years of probation.

In all, we found nearly 200 nurse aides whose records on the state’s nurse aide registry are clean, but who have criminal histories for violent or serious offenses.

Many are, right now, working at the bedsides of vulnerable Texas nursing home residents.

“They have dementia, Alzheimer's, symptoms that cause them to have a lack of communication,” said Ernest Tosh, an attorney who handles nursing home abuse cases across the United States.

“They can't express exactly what happened, which is why violent offenders should be screened out from working in these facilities,” Tosh said. “They can physically or sexually assault an individual and there be no repercussions because that individual can't identify them or communicate what happened.”

But others says there’s a reason nursing homes hire criminals. Susan Hodges would know. She’s a former nursing home administrator.

“It's very demanding and very tough,” Hodges said. “I've seen the aides get hit in the stomach. I've seen them get bit … I've seen them take a lot of punishment. A lot more than you realize.”

At minimum wage, barely above $7 an hour, a nurse aide is often left to clean, bathe and feed as many as 30 residents at a time. That’s compounded by Texas’ lack of minimum staffing level requirements.

A nurse aide could flip burgers and make more money, Hodges said. This all adds up to a job few are willing to do, and an industry that sets the bar low in order to keep facilities staffed and profitable, experts like Hodges told WFAA.

WFAA asked Hodges what would happen if the state cracked down and actually barred criminals from working in nursing homes.

“It would be a huge hit because they would have to go to find another pool of employees,” Hodges said. “I would say at least a fourth of their staff would be gone.”

But others disagree.

“I think our state needs to recognize that nursing homes are not as poor as they claim to be,” said J.T. Borah, an Austin attorney show specializes in nursing home abuse and neglect. “If the industry were to finance and staff at the level they were supposed to, they could afford better employees. They could have better applicants.”

Families of nursing home victims agreed with Borah. Liz Harris has alleged her sister was sexually assaulted in a nursing home by a man with past arrests.

“That’s not right,” Harris said. “I'm really appalled at that right now. And the more I think about it, I'm angry. … What if it were their family members?”

“You guys (nursing homes) should know better,” Liz Harris added. “You're in the business of taking care of people and that's what you really should be doing.”

WFAA asked the Texas Department of Health and Human Services for an on-camera interview so that we could show them the list of criminal nurse aides we’ve uncovered. They declined that opportunity but expressed an interest in reviewing the names WFAA found.

In 2018, lawmakers will take on nursing home reform as one of the Texas legislature’s interim charges to improve the quality of care for nursing home and assisted living facility residents. The Senior Source has issued their recommendations, which include “requiring annual background checks, at a minimum, for ANYONE working in long-term care facilities.”

Full Article & Source:
Criminal Caretakers: Hundreds of certified aides with criminal histories working in nursing homes

Criminal Caretakers: Lax regulations put violent offenders at nursing home residents’ bedsides

The images are hard to watch -- vulnerable, elderly residents of Texas nursing homes beaten and abused by their caretakers.

The abysmal care is more than anecdotal. Using data from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, WFAA discovered the patient abuse rate in Texas nursing homes is nearly four times the national average.

But there’s a heartbreaking story behind these numbers.

News 8 investigator Charlotte Huffman spent months analyzing state data, and made a disturbing discovery: violent criminals are working as certified nursing aides (CNAs), and in many cases, it’s legal.

Chapter 1

Two cases of assault and abuse

“I don’t understand it,” said Liz Harris, recalling what happened to her sister, Mary, at The Rehabilitation & Wellness Centre of Dallas on Live Oak Street in Dallas.

“I want people to know,” Harris said. “It can happen to anybody. And you be careful about where you put your loved ones.”

These days, Mary is in a brighter place, a new nursing home, but she still remembers that night two years ago.

“He took advantage of me, no doubt about it,” she said. “At first I asked him, 'What are you doing?' 'Well, Ms. Harris, I'm going to get you ready for a bath.' I thought that was the truth.”

Instead, she said, her CNA sexually assaulted her.

After the incident, Mary was taken to Parkland Hospital. She tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease. At the time, she was 66.

In a civil suit filed by her family against the nursing home, doctors say that “it is undeniable that Ms. Harris was infected while she was under care at the facility." If that’s proven to be true, court documents show, then the nursing home says “nurse assistant Rodney Jolly Shead is responsible.”

WFAA contacted Shead, who was never charged with a crime in connection with the incident. He denied an on-camera interview request, and any wrongdoing. But, the 32-year-old admits that the nursing home let him go after the allegations surfaced

Chandler McCaughan also trusted a nursing home to protect his mother.

At the Windsor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center of Duval near Austin, CNA Carlos Santacruz was caring for McCaughan's mother, or so he thought.

“Instead he's taking pictures of her you know wiping feces on her face,” he said.

Santacruz was fired and charged with injury to the elderly after he posted pictures on social media in which he tickled the sleeping 83-year-old’s face, prompting her to smear feces on herself. He recently pleaded to assault against elderly, records show. Despite WFAA attempts to reach him via email and social media, Santacruz couldn't be reached for comment.

“I was horrified, absolutely furious. This is my mother,” McCaughan said. “She's someone's sister, someone's aunt.”

Both these victims have one thing in common: Both nurse aides had a previous prior criminal record. Santacruz was previously arrested for fraud and drug possession. Shead confessed to two counts of assault causing bodily injury. The nursing homes hired them anyway.

“That right there just blew my mind,” Liz Harris said. “For them to even allow that … why would they do that?”

Because in Texas, they can.

Full Article & Source:
Criminal Caretakers: Lax regulations put violent offenders at nursing home residents’ bedsides