new corporation investigating health care workers

CRNI-ICU20 · Sep 7, 2007

MLOS: I am not uncomfortable with being looked into....you are missing my point....

I don't have a bloody thing to hide, and could care less if they trollop all over the universe to do a background check on me....

MY POINT IS: the PROFILING of people, prospective employees, based on subjective information that may or may not be used against them at some point in time, or may or may not be used to their benefit should they desire a job somewhere....

MY POINT IS: that when you apply for a job in this country,you are protected from certain discriminatory acts....like not being hired because you are black, or Jewish, or handicapped....

This kind of profiling is not on the radar screen....it is occult...it doesn't really exist...yet it does....

Under the Equal Opportunity Act, there is no clause that says an employer cannot NOT hire you because you show a tendency for not paying your rent on time, or you frequent a local watering hole on occasion...or you had six parking tickets....but when this kind of information is being gathered, for an employer/employee purpose, what do you THINK it's end point is???

I am not worried for myself....because I have nothing to hide...unless the information that was gathered was incorrect, or slanted....and then, that keeps me from getting a fair shake at the HR office....

Just because it's all roses and sunshine for some, does not mean it is for all....and this is what is troubling....

People being labeled...or profiled based on someone else's opinion of you.....and that determines whether you are hired or not....

If this doesn't bother you, then I would have to conclude that you simply do not possess empathy towards people who, through no fault of their own, are unjustly labeled and profiled....

I think that it is completely wrong to treat people this way, particularly when they have no legal or political recourse....

I don't know how old you are, but you might want to take a little history lesson from the Joseph McCarthy era.....just google his name, or go to Wikipedia....maybe then you will have a better idea of what I am concerned about....

And please, if you will, try to look beyond the statements that this is about ME....it's not about me....it's about all of us who one day may be at the mercy of wrong information being banked about us....

If you have a solution for how to combat bad information being disseminated throughout the healthcare kingdom, I would like to know what that would be....

crni

CRNI-ICU20 · Sep 7, 2007

here is a little snippet of what happened to just a few of the people that were black listed in hollywood due to the wrong information being gathered about them.....

a lesson for us all:

hollywood blacklist

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protestors opposing the jailing of the hollywood ten in 1950 (from the 1987 documentary legacy of the hollywood blacklist).

the hollywood blacklist—more properly the entertainment industry blacklist, into which it expanded—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other u.s. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or associations, real or suspected. artists were barred from work on the basis of their alleged membership in or sympathy toward the american communist party, involvement in liberal or simply humanitarian political causes that enforcers of the blacklist associated with communism, and/or refusal to assist federal investigations into communist party activities; some were blacklisted merely because their names came up at the wrong place and time. even during the period of its strictest enforcement, the late 1940s through the late 1950s, the blacklist was rarely made explicit and verifiable, but it caused direct damage to the careers of scores of american artists, often made betrayal of friendship (not to mention principle) the price for a livelihood, and promoted ideological censorship across the entire industry.

the first systematic hollywood blacklist was instituted on november 25, 1947, the day after ten writers and directors were cited for contempt of congress for refusing to give testimony to the house committee on un-american activities. a group of studio executives, acting under the aegis of the motion picture association of america, announced the firing of the artists—the so-called hollywood ten—in what has become known as the waldorf statement. on june 22, 1950, a pamphlet called red channels appeared, naming 151 entertainment industry professionals in the context of "red fascists and their sympathizers"; soon most of those named, along with a host of other artists, were barred from employment in much of the entertainment field. the blacklist was effectively broken in 1960 when dalton trumbo, an unrepentant member of the hollywood ten, was publicly acknowledged as the screenwriter of the films spartacus and exodus. a number of those blacklisted, however, were still barred from work in their professions for years afterward.

crni

CRNI-ICU20 · Sep 7, 2007

here are two web addresses that may make you realize how wrong it is to gather up information about others....and then deny them the right to work....the right to pursue their happiness, the right to liberty.....

please take the time to read it.....then you will understand why all my alarm bells are going off!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_mccarthy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist

Nursebarebari · Sep 7, 2007

Hi kids,
Because I am considering a traveling position in the near future, I have been applying with many companies, etc. One in particular wants me to sign a "pre-employment and disclosure release form". This sounds innocuous enough when just scratching the surface....the usual personal references, etc. However, when reading the fine print, this gives permission for credit history/checks, driving records, address history/ies, public records relating to criminal charges, if any, and an "investigative consumer report, which means a consumer report or portion thereof in which information on a consumer's character, general reputation, personal characteristics, or mode of living is obtained through personal interviews with persons having knowledge."
This is done through a company that has been in existence since 1983 as a background investigation company, but since 1993 have been assisting health care facilities in verifying healthcare credentials and healthcare integrity.
It all sounds good, right?
Here's the part that seems NOT OKAY.
If you are denied a job because of false or mis-construed information obtained about you by this "investigative" company, ie, people who may go through your garbage for instance, or who may talk to your neighbors, or who may speak to a former room mate, take pictures of you without your knowledge while you are seen going into a club or pub... speak to a boyfriend/girlfriend, or former teacher, and you have no RE-COURSE for rebuttal, because, this is afterall, ALL CONFIDENTIAL even from you, then it smacks of PROFILING....
To me this is no different than not hiring someone because they aren't the right color, religion, sex, or age......which under the Employment Freedom Act, is ILLEGAL....but doing "background checks" like this are not included in this situation......
How do you all feel about this?
Here is the website of the company.....http://www.precheck.com/about.shtml
Personally, I find it to be a real invasion of privacy just to get a job!
I am surprised that no one in any major nursing association is questioning this at all.....
Why should an employer have the right to know where you shop, what you buy, who you entertain, what movies you watch, where you eat out, whether you have drinks with dinner, what books you read.....all of this to provide a prospective employer with a "character profile".....?
I can understand needing to know whether or not someone is a felon, whether they are lying about their educational background or credentials.....and finding out that information is completely easy to do without getting "personal"....
Eventhough I am not hiding anything, and I certainly don't have anything in my closet to be ashamed of, I wonder how a seemingly innocent situation could be skewed against me just because I went out with friends to a local pub to hear a good band one evening.....I am not kidding....Is this what hospitals and HR departments are spending their money on??? give me a break!!
I would prefer that the particulars of my divorce not be common knowledge amongst some in HR, whether they are able to keep it confidential or not.....even though it's a matter of public record, why would my employer or potential employer need to know the entirety of my divorce proceedings....including the reasons why I filed, etc?? Here's a list from their website what they look into....
Criminal records search (county, state, federal, and international)
Employment history verification
Credentialing of licenses, certifications and permits
Education verification
SSN verification
Adverse action notification
Civil records search (county, state, and federal)
Credit history check
Motor vehicle reports
NPDB (National Practitioner Data Bank) - HIPDB (Healthcare Integrity & Protection Data Bank)
Personal references
Sanction search of excluded individuals
Maiden Name / AKA search
NHDB (National Healthcare Data Bank) cumulative sanction
screening
I know this sounds almost paranoid, yet, I have to wonder why hospitals would need to know the particulars of my civil court case, ie divorce in order to hire me....or where I go out to eat....or what companies I do business with....
How do you guys feel about this?? crni

Wow, it sounds like you applied for American presidency. Has anyone ever had this position?

Altra, BSN, RN · Sep 7, 2007

MY POINT IS: that when you apply for a job in this country,you are protected from certain discriminatory acts....like not being hired because you are black, or Jewish, or handicapped....
This kind of profiling is not on the radar screen....it is occult...it doesn't really exist...yet it does....
Under the Equal Opportunity Act, there is no clause that says an employer cannot NOT hire you because you show a tendency for not paying your rent on time, or you frequent a local watering hole on occasion...or you had six parking tickets....

Have you ever been in the position of hiring someone? Was there more than one equally qualified candidate for the position? If so, how did you choose? You did what is innate in human nature: you picked the one that you liked best or who fit some possibly ill-defined "hunch" of yours that that would be the best person for the job. Is this "fair"? No, but life isn't fair. We are human, and we are biased. The law keeps in check some people's more grievous biases. You call it profiling and attach some negative connotation to that. I call it simply human nature. Many years ago I was driving in bad weather when I hit a patch of ice and slammed my car into a tree in a residential yard. I did significant damage to the tree, and felt appropriately like a heel when speaking with the homeowner as we exchanged insurance info. It got worse: a week later I went on an interview and after spending time in HR was walked to the manager's office and came face to face with that same homeowner. After a full minute of icy silence I addressed the obvious and asked, "Is there any chance you will consider me for this position? If not, I'm going to leave." His silence continued, and I politely ended the interview and left. Was it "fair" of him? Nope. But it was human. It would certainly have been a nice gesture if he would have taken the high road and attempted to evaluate my suitability for the job independent of my Very Bad Day in Very Bad Weather. But he didn't. It doesn't make him a bad guy, just a human being with human biases and foibles.

but when this kind of information is being gathered, for an employer/employee purpose, what do you THINK it's end point is???

I think the end point is that this is what the hiring company has requested. It is their right to do so. An individual may feel it's inappropriate, and has the right to not be employed by this company.

People being labeled...or profiled based on someone else's opinion of you.....and that determines whether you are hired or not....

Yep, human nature again, whether or not the hiring company uses any kind of sophisticated means of gathering information or simply calls an applicant in for an interview the old-fashioned way and makes an off-the-cuff decision without all the bells and whistles.

If this doesn't bother you, then I would have to conclude that you simply do not possess empathy towards people who, through no fault of their own, are unjustly labeled and profiled....
I think that it is completely wrong to treat people this way, particularly when they have no legal or political recourse....

What you call a lack of empathy (come on now ... was that necessary? or empathetic?) I call a mature understanding of how the world works.

I don't know how old you are, but you might want to take a little history lesson from the Joseph McCarthy era.....just google his name, or go to Wikipedia....maybe then you will have a better idea of what I am concerned about....

My age, 40, is in my profile. Your profile states that you have 20 years nursing experience. If you came in to nursing as a first career, it is fairly likely that you & I are roughly the same age ... old enough to have studied McCarthyism.

If you have a solution for how to combat bad information being disseminated throughout the healthcare kingdom, I would like to know what that would be....

As I stated in a previous post, I know of no solution to inaccurate information contained in credit reports and other electronic records, other than vigilance. The burden is clearly on the individual. I'm not saying that that is "fair" or "right" -- I am saying that it's reality.

Good luck with your job hunting.

IMustBeCrazy · Sep 7, 2007

this company sounds alot like "group one" in texas.
lindarn, rn, bsn, ccrn
spokane, washington

precheck's corporate headquarters are located in houston, texas.

phone

800-999-9861

713-861-5959

e-mail

[email protected]

alamogordo employment:

phone

713-580-0504

fax

832-565-8999

e-mail

[email protected]

IMustBeCrazy · Sep 7, 2007

precheck's corporate headquarters are located in houston, texas.
phone
800-999-9861
713-861-5959
e-mail
[email protected]
alamogordo employment:
phone
713-580-0504
fax
832-565-8999
e-mail
[email protected]

group one info: http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/psb/company/company_details.aspx?id=a06820

CRNI-ICU20 · Sep 11, 2007

To Mlos: thank you for wishing me good luck at job hunting....

I know I won't have any trouble getting a job....just as long as what is "investigated" about me is correct information....which, even if I followed your sage advice about being diligent in checking my credit report won't tell me the whole of their investigation.....so, you see, my credit report could say the truth....but some other part of the investigational process could be untrue.....and since you stated that since life isn't fair, well, I guess I am just supposed to accept this as one of those unfair things in life....

EXCEPT: I disagree....

I don't think ANY company needs to know what house I lived in twenty years ago in order to hire me...

I don't think ANY company needs to know if I was ever late on my rent 5 months ago in order to deem me qualified to work at the bedside of critically injured and sick patients....

whether I am late on my rent or I got a speeding ticket or had two police calls to my house in the last two years does not QUALIFY ME TO WORK IN ICU....but

HAVING ICU LEVEL SKILLS EXPERIENCE AND TRAINING DOES!! What baffles me is that an employer would take this very expensive nebulous route toward hiring an individual as opposed to doing a simple criminal background check, maybe a DMV record, and a person's educational and credentialing background....

While THIS is supposedly ENORMOUSLY helpful to the employer to know what places I frequent, or whom I keep company, or what conditions I live in, it is not criteria for choosing between two individuals who both may be qualified for a given job.....this is criteria for labeling people. If employers need to make a decision between two qualified people, they need to grow a pair and make a dang decision! They don't need to knock on my neighbor's door from ten years back and ask them if I was a good human being!!

I wasn't trying to insult you about McCarthy....because I truly didn't know what your age was ...I usually don't even pay attention to that....I mostly pay attention to what a person is trying to say here...

I just find it very forboding and interesting that history is repeating itself here, only with a different puzzle piece....instead of "communism" being the impetus for delving into people's private lives, it is the need to "hire a good employee???".....don't you find this a bit over the top??

McCarthyism's end point was hundreds of people who were black balled and falsely accused of being communists, and denied employment because of it...

You say this is "just a fact of life".....

I say we have not learned a lesson from history, and now we are bound to repeat it.....

It didn't work in the McCarthy years, and now, with computers and other electronic surveillance systems, it won't work again!

Isn't the definition of insanity: repeating the same method over and over again expecting a different result?

I would love for more SANE approaches to hiring employees!

To IMUSTBECRAZY:

I looked into Group One and I wonder if this company is connected, because I noticed as well, that they are from Houston....it wouldn't surprise me if they are "sister" companies....

Which brings up an interesting thought.....

Once data has been collected and banked.....what happens to it?

Where does it go? Do companies sell the information to other vendors, for say, other kinds of profiling research....like maybe companies that study buying trends of consumers...

Does the information STAY IN THIS COUNTRY? and how would an average person like myself be assured of that?

Who has access beyond this company to my information that is banked all in one spot?

Are you notified if there is a breach in their security?

MLOS mentioned that it is up to the individual to keep their own identity intact....yes...that is true...but the playing field is no longer equal....they have all the tools in their hands and can write whatever they want, and you have no legal recourse....because they do not fall under any federal law with this type of "profiling"....

Thank you to all who responded to my thread. crni

sharona97, BSN, RN · Sep 11, 2007

Isn't it strange the other side of this coin is that HIPPA is mandatory to PROTECT the patient? Any thoughts?

RN1989 · Sep 11, 2007

To those that think CRNI is crazy - Take a trip to TX to see McCarthyism at its finest. It started in San Antonio nearly 15 years ago with the blacklisting of troublesome nurses who chose to fight the system in an effort to provide safety for both patients and nurses, and it is alive and well today in all areas of the state and is moving to other states as well. See postings related to Group One and the nurses recently fired in Mesquite.

CRNI - I'm with you. There is NO reason that employers need to know anything more than your level of education, licensure, etc. Thanks be to the people so afraid of terrorists that we have lost our right to privacy along with our freedoms and now the healthcare industry is using the info to blackball true nurses willing to stand up for what is right.

And yes - companies search these online forums to see if they can figure out who is on them so they can use the postings against nurses to either fire them or prevent them from getting jobs.

Elvish, BSN, DNP, RN, NP · Sep 11, 2007

Gives me the creeps, quite frankly. I understand the need to find out whether I have a criminal record or not, and if my degree is really existent. That is reasonable enough.

But I am not for 'them' looking to see what books I have checked out of the library, what classes I have enrolled in at college for my own enjoyment, or what sorts of things I have ordered online. Fortunately, I haven't anything to hide, but what if I wanted read a book about Che Guevara, just to broaden my horizons?

I'm just a little creeped out by it all. I don't blame you for being uneasy about it, crni.

Altra, BSN, RN · Sep 12, 2007

I thought that I had said what I had to say on this thread. But ...

As I stated several posts back, I do not think that concern about background investigations is paranoid or anything like that, and I am not entirely comfortable with the idea. But what I am failing to grasp is where some are getting the idea that your library card will be checked ... someone will (follow you? what?) want to find out where you go to socialize ... things like that.

If you've been late on your rent it will probably be on your credit report (unless you rented from an individual property owner who doesn't bother with such things). The OP has said she has no objection to a credit check.

So I truly want to know ... what is the source of the concern on the part of some of you that these other (very dramatic-sounding) steps will be taken? I'm not saying it's impossible ... I just want to know what you're basing your concerns on.

This has not been my experience, except (ridiculously) for a part-time position as a receptionist when I was 19. I needed to go through an employment recruiter for that one, and they wanted to know what kind of car I drove (year, make & model), where I banked and other riduculous things. It was about an image they had, or were trying to project. I ended up withdrawing my application. Of the 5 times I've been through the hiring process in the health care field each application has had language similar to what the OP posted. In each case the "persons having knowledge" of me (language posted by the OP) were the references that I chose to provide names and contact numbers for. And I've been offered all 5 positions. This is just MHO, but I have no concern -- zero, zip -- that someone is going to undertake the time, effort and expense of doing a "PI"-type investigation of me, following me to see where I hang out or shop, or request my records from the public library ... for a job as a $23.00/hr. hospital nurse. Ain't gonna happen. It's just not cost effective.