(The Center Square) – Health care workers in Illinois now face penalties up to being banned from working in the industry if they are found to be guilty of covering up abuse or interfering with any formal investigation.
Gov. JB Pritzker signed off on the measure, which also increases the range of penalties that the Health Care Worker Registry can administer for violators after the Office of Inspector General (OIG) has made them aware of such infractions.
The legislation comes after a pattern of abuse and cover-ups at Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center were uncovered. The state-run institution is home to individuals suffering from intellectual and developmental disabilities and mental illnesses.
The new law extends to workers at state-run institutions as well as those at privately operated community agencies that function under the supervision of OIG officials and the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS).
The registry will identify health care workers prohibited from working with vulnerable populations in any long-term care setting, adding “material obstruction” of an investigation to the list of findings that can be reported.
Pritzker inked the bill on the same day IDHS released a 34-page report calling for a “top to bottom analysis” of all processes associated with the reporting of abuse and neglect at Choate “because at the present time there appear to be fundamental problems with all aspects of that system.”
The OIG report made direct mention of a 2014 incident at Choate, where an individual with a developmental disability was beaten by four mental health technicians, ending with each of them being charged with felony offenses. Three of them also pleaded guilty to failing to comply with abuse reporting laws for state employees, and mental health technician Mark Allen ultimately pleaded guilty to felony obstruction of justice.
All told, at least eight people were found to have colluded to obstruct the state police and OIG investigation.
“This was a textbook example of a code of silence, in which staff seek to protect each other from the consequences of their misconduct by remaining silent about what they witnessed or lying to protect their fellow employees,” the new OIG report stated.
