ProPublica’s Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein are back on the disciplined caregivers beat, this time cooperating with USA Today to expose a licensing gap that makes it easier for disciplined nurses to find work in other states. The licensing agreement in question was signed a decade ago as 24 states agreed to recognize each other’s licenses in an attempt to alleviate care shortages by allowing nurses to work where they are needed most.
In some cases, nurses have retained clean multistate licenses after at least one compact state had banned them. They have ignored their patients’ needs, stolen their pain medication, forgotten crucial tests or missed changes in their condition, records show.
Critics say the compact may actually multiply the risk to patients. There is no central licensing for the compact, so policing nurses is left to the vigilance of member states.
Outside the compact, each state licenses and disciplines its own nurses. But within it, states effectively agree to allow in nurses they have never reviewed.
Ornstein and Weber found numerous instances in which a caregiver disciplined in one state was able to work for an extended period in another without being red-flagged, and are helping spark a debate over the costs, benefits and implementations of such agreements.
