$11 Million Set Aside to Assist Ailing California Hospitals and Nurses with Fingerprinting

Fingerprinting locations across the state of California should see a sizeable uptick in business soon as nearly 150,000 nurses rush to be fingerprinted in an effort to comply with recent emergency regulations from the California Board of Registered Nursing requiring the fingerprinting of those nurses with no fingerprints on file.

So, why the sudden requirement forcing nurses to answer the “Fingerprinting 911” call?

Following an investigation by the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica that revealed more than 40 percent of California's nearly 345,000 registered nurses had not undergone fingerprinting that would allow law enforcement agencies to conduct criminal history record checks, the California Board of Registered Nursing unanimously approved emergency regulations requiring all of its licensees to submit to fingerprinting as a condition of renewal, activating an inactive license, or reinstatement of an expired license.

The California Board of Registered Nursing also received approval from the state Office of Administrative Law to begin fingerprinting the approximately 147,000 nurses licensed before 1990, the year when the Board began requiring the fingerprinting of new applicants.

The California Board of Registered Nursing will begin enforcing emergency regulations requiring the fingerprinting of nurses on March 1, 2009.

But the fingerprinting of nearly 150,000 nurses won’t come cheap. The California Board of Registered Nursing estimates that the new fingerprinting requirement will cost over $4 million for the first three years and $1.7 million for each year after.

To help California’s healthcare industry answer the “Fingerprinting 911” emergency call, the Pre-employ.com Family of Companies – a nationwide leader in Human Resources services and solutions – has earmarked $11 million to help reimburse California hospitals, and the nurses affected, for the cost of the emergency regulations for fingerprinting. With over 600 collection sites in California and a mobile network of Live Scan’s inkless electronic fingerprinting service, Pre-employ.com is capable of providing fingerprinting services to nearly any hospital and nurse in the state, which has the most registered nurses in the nation.

An overview of Pre-employ.com’s reimbursement program for hospitals and nurses will be given in a FREE 40 minute webinar titled “$11 Million Set Aside to Assist Ailing California Hospitals and Nurses with Fingerprinting” on Thursday, February 5, 2009 from 1:00 PM to 1:40 PM PST. Participants in the webinar will learn details about the new fingerprinting requirement for all California nurses and how hospitals covering the cost of fingerprinting their entire nursing staff can be reimbursed. California hospital decision makers and nurses interested in joining this webinar – “$11 Million Set Aside to Assist Ailing California Hospitals and Nurses with Fingerprinting” – may sign up at www.pre-employ.com/Fingerprint911.

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