Ordering a basic pre-employment package may not be enough to find out if a new hire will be safe for your company. Executive Healthcare Managment (EHM) has an article about the potential pitfalls of not running a fully featured screening package. Adding to the complexity, the historic healthcare legislation signed will mean that organizations will have more stringent hiring standards by following both state and federal standards.

EHM tells the true story of when a new privacy office began working at a 300-bed medical facility learns that a contracted nurse had been taking patient records home. The nurse would copy the records and then replace them once she was done. These records included date of births, social security numbers, and other sensitive information. Because of large number of records copied by the nurse, some 630 files, the facility was faced with notifying the victims, legal questions, and strained public relations.

Once the privacy office became aware of the situation, she had to hire an outside risk consulting firm in order to investigate how such a breach was able to occur. Quickly, the firm found that, while the contract nurse seemed qualified, only a "bare minimum" background screening was performed. A more substantive check revealed that the nurse had a substance abuse problem, bad credit, pled guilty to theft, and felony possession of controlled substances. Because the nurse was contracted, the medical facility relied on the agency's background check which did not conduct a credit check, or drug screening.

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