New regulations for home health care nurses and community based nurses went into effect in Ohio on January 1 of this year.
It was a move made to raise the standard of care and safety of home nursing care across the state.
The new regulations require stricter background checks of nurses including, checking registries for sex offenders and abusive caregivers.
Re-checks every five years are also now required.
At the Visiting Nurse Association of Ohio, they welcome the new regulations.
Emily Smayda Kelly is the Human Resource Officer for the V.N.A. and she says the more extensive backgrounds checks, including fingerprint research, have always been standard procedure at the V.N.A.
"This will definitely put more of a burden on our competition that haven't done that, it will actually bring in a different person into people's homes so it will be helpful for consumers," said Smayda Kelly.
The new regulations have also created more costs, vendors that provide the background checks have raised their rates.
But at the V.N.A., a non profit, they don't plan to raise their prices, "No we eat those costs so to speak, we do not raise our prices but we try to deal with other ways of cost retention," said Smayda Kelly.
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