Massachusetts health regulators on Friday warned executives of all the state's hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and staffing agencies that people with fraudulent nursing licenses may be working in their facilities, and said that investigators are scouring 21,000 licenses for fake credentials.
The unusual warning and statewide review come more than two weeks after the state revoked or suspended 13 nursing licenses because it found evidence of fraud. Regulators identified two more people with fraudulent nursing licenses earlier this week.
A letter sent Friday warned health care executives that “additional individuals . . . may be identified as having submitted fraudulent applications” and urged them to compare the state’s list of recent license revocations and suspensions against their staff rosters.
Scott Zoback, Health Department spokesman, said the state had been unable to locate one of the two people identified this week, Josette Raymond, who wrote on her application that she lives in Malden and was licensed as a registered nurse in Puerto Rico and Oklahoma. The board suspended Raymond’s license but could not pinpoint where she had worked.
“We know that at one point she was employed in health care in the state,” Zoback said.
The other woman, Yanick Bleck of Roslindale, agreed to have her license revoked after admitting that in 2011 she submitted a licensure application falsely stating that she had a license from Guam. Bleck’s case is the earliest instance of fraud the state has identified. The other fraudulent licenses were filed within the past 15 months.
Raymond and Bleck could not be reached for comment Friday evening.
The people who allegedly held fraudulent nursing licenses were taking advantage of “reciprocity,” a provision that makes it easier for nurses licensed in other states to obtain a Massachusetts license. The nursing board accepts licenses from other states or territories as evidence that a person has graduated from an accredited school and has passed the nursing qualifying exam.
But only one of the original 13 found to have fraudulent licenses had passed the exam. At least two said they had attended colleges that had no record of their attendance, according to state documents. At least nine had worked as nurses in Massachusetts, primarily in nursing homes.
After the fraud came to light in August, the board launched an investigation of all licenses awarded by reciprocity since 2010. The state has gone through thousands of applications but had no timetable on when the probe would be finished, Zoback said. “Anything that raises a flag, we are doing a review by hand, including contacting any entity we need to contact,” he said.
State regulators have alerted officials in other states about the expanding probe in Massachusetts, and has contacted the organization that runs Nursys, a national database for verifying nurse licensure, according to Zoback.
The state has also posted a list of its disciplinary actions resulting from the fraud investigation on its website.
A Globe review of the documents in the initial 13 cases found common patterns. For example, four filed forms indicating they had licenses from Hawaii, all supposedly signed recently by the same person — a person who, Massachusetts officials later learned, had retired five years earlier. Three claimed to have Oklahoma licenses, each purportedly signed by “Kimberly Glazier”; Oklahoma officials told Massachusetts investigators that Kimberly Glazier does not sign verification forms.
Raymond — the person whose nursing license was suspended this week — had applied with a form saying she had an Oklahoma license, which also bore a signature from “Kimberly Glazier.”
Most of those found to have fraudulently obtained licenses in Massachusetts submitted licenses from the few states that don’t participate in Nursys, the nurse licensing database. Even those states have their own online systems that can quickly confirm whether someone has a legitimate license.
Since 2000, the state has outsourced nurse licensure verification to Professional Credential Services of Nashville, which also reviews license applications for pharmacists, psychologists, optometrists, and many other professionals in Massachusetts. The company collects licensing fees from applicants and keeps a portion of the fee.
The state is reviewing whether it wants to continue working with Professional Credential Services. The company asserted Monday that it has “consistently met contractual obligations” and followed the directions of state officials.