Details about this story

• Source: Fort Worth Star-Telegram
• Date: September 23, 2007
• URL: Read the story
• Bylines: Darren Barbee
• Topics: Health Care
• Data Types: State Data
• Description/Excerpt: The tales found in the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Service's disciplinary files can be savage, sad and stomach-turning. But they are intended to serve an essential purpose: protecting Texas grandparents, disabled children and the terminally ill from abusive or dishonest nurse aides and other caregivers. But dangerous blind spots plague the system that oversees them, a Star-Telegram examination has found. Across the state, caregivers facing discipline for sexual misconduct, theft, abuse -- and a fatal case of neglect -- were all able to find and hold new jobs. Consider this: The department has banned about 680 people -- for life -- from working at any of the facilities it regulates. Yet every two years, the department renews the certifications of some of those same workers as nurse aides.