The state Department of Health and Social Services has recently barred anyone who has previously committed serious criminal offenses from working with vulnerable children and adults.
New regulations will take effect Feb. 9. Employees and others who have unsupervised contact with clients in nursing homes, hospitals, assisted living homes, and other facilities and programs licensed or certified by the department will be affected.
The department rewrote the proposed regulations based on an extraordinary amount of public comment received.
The department will provide training and technical assistance to health care providers to implement the requirements. The department has also contracted with the University of Alaska to conduct training on the prevention of abuse and neglect.
A new background check unit in the Division of Public Health, Certification and Licensing Section, is providing criminal background information to health care facilities.
Since March of 2006, the unit has processed more than 7,100 applications. To date, about 34 percent of all applications have shown the possibility of prior criminal activity.
The unit has identified one applicant with a prior homicide, 13 with felony assaults, five with crimes against children, eight with sexually-based offenses, as well as applicants with histories of drug-related, robbery, Medicaid fraud and other serious crimes.
