Employees in nursing homes, home health care, residential care homes, assisted living centers and other health care settings who were not fingerprinted as part of a state-required background check will be able to keep their jobs, but will be barred from providing direct care to patients until the mandate is fulfilled, the state Department of Public Health said Tuesday.
Gov. Ned Lamont suspended the order that workers in those sectors be fingerprinted when the pandemic hit Connecticut. Employees hired from March 23, 2020, to May 19, 2021, were able to start work without completing that leg of the background check. The requirement was waived to avoid further spread of COVID-19, officials have said.
The law is designed to shield nursing home residents and others from would-be staff who have histories of certain violent crimes.
The health department previously said that workers who did not get fingerprinted by Tuesday- when the waiver was set to expire — would be terminated. The deadline raised concerns among union leaders, who asked that it be postponed, and nursing home operators, who feared staffing shortages. About 7,500 people were hired while the waiver was in place and, as of Tuesday, about 630 still needed to be fingerprinted.
In a memo to health care providers, Acting Public Health Commissioner Deidre Gifford wrote that while the deadline would not be pushed back, staff who have not been fingerprinted could keep their jobs — but they are prohibited from providing “direct care access” services. The department defines direct care access as “physical access to a patient or resident of a long-term care facility that affords an individual the opportunity to commit abuse or neglect against or misappropriate the property of a patient or resident.”
...from News https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Health-care-workers-who-aren-t-fingerprinted-16328304.php
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