Personal Injury Law

Failure of L.A. County safeguards let convicted rapist work at clinic

By Edward Bills

And the government wants to run medical care for us all. Duh.

If Los Angeles County had followed procedures, a health department official says, a convicted rapist would not have returned to work as an X-ray technologist.

A breakdown in county procedures meant to protect patients and ensure standards for health professionals allowed a temporary employment agency to send a convicted rapist to work at a large East Los Angeles clinic, according to the head of Los Angeles County’s health department.

The interim director of the Department of Health Services, said three key safeguards failed when an X-ray technologist who had been fired returned to work in a county facility:

* County managers didn’t check the man against their own internal “do not send” list, which is supposed to be used for temporary hires.

* No one ran a new criminal background check, despite county policy requiring it.

* The X-ray technologist was not issued identification he should have needed to clear security checkpoints at the Edward R. Roybal Comprehensive Health Center and to work in restricted areas, another required check that should have turned up his troubled history with the county.

Full post as published by Bodily Injury Blog on February 08, 2009 (boomark / email).