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ACCESS AND OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL >> Barriers to Medical Employment
Campaign Brief:
Removing Barriers to Medical Employment
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Background
One of the largest challenges after being incarcerated is finding a good-paying job with dignity that will allow a person to become self-sufficient or even care for family members. At the same time, hospitals, nursing homes and doctor offices have been scrambling for years to find highly skilled people to fill the open health care jobs in Michigan. For example, one report from the Michigan Health Council projected our state will have a shortage of 61,900 nurses between 2022 and 2032.
Many people who have been involved with the justice system would like to have jobs such as social worker or nurse, but people with a criminal record face numerous legal barriers to employment in the health care industry.
Both state law and state Medicaid rules contain broad limitations on hiring someone with a criminal record, regardless of their other qualifications. This includes many social workers and other professionals who have completed their professional training and obtained occupational licenses but are barred from working in hospitals or as Medicaid providers by state law. These laws exclude people with any felony conviction from having a job with access to patients or patient records within 10 years of the end of their statutory maximum sentence (including community supervision). Misdemeanor convictions carry exclusions of 1-5 years, depending on severity. Safe & Just Michigan estimates that 400,000 to 500,000 people in Michigan are prevented from working in inpatient facilities or as Medicaid providers due to these exclusions.
Vision
No one benefits when hospitals are understaffed or our loved ones in nursing homes suffer because there aren’t enough people to care for them. Our health care facilities face troubling staffing shortages that are expected to get worse in the coming years. At the same time, many justice-involved people have acquired the skills and training needed to take these jobs, or would like to do so, but state law is preventing them from working in inpatient facilities or as Medicaid providers.
We can help hospitals, nursing homes and Medicaid providers solve their staffing problems while creating opportunities for justice-involved people. Laws that prevent these skilled workers from getting the professional licenses they need are misguided and don’t help anyone — especially when there’s a shortage of employees in the medical field.
Solution
Michigan must remove barriers that prevent people trained to work in the medical field from taking the jobs waiting for them there, or that deter them from training to do so. People who have criminal records don’t just have that — they frequently also have college degrees, occupational and professional licenses, supervised experience and on-the-job training are ready and qualified to take open jobs in hospitals, nursing homes and other medical settings. The only thing stopping them are state laws and policies.
We propose ending the hiring exclusion against hiring justice-involved people at places that accept Medicaid funding. That rule prevents their hiring within 10 years of the statutory maximum end of a felony sentence or 1-5 years from the statutory maximum end of a misdemeanor sentence. There is no evidence suggesting that this rule is protecting the public; at the same time, it is adding to the worker shortage in the medical field and creating unnecessary barriers to employment for people with criminal records.
To further combat the health care worker shortage, we also want to see health care jobs training programs in prisons which do not currently exist due to these legal barriers. One of the roles of prisons is to prepare people for their release, and that includes teaching job skills to people who are incarcerated. These skills currently include food service, carpentry, automotive repair and other abilities that directly translate into job opportunities. Adding health care skills, such as being a nursing assistant, would set up a person to apply for a multitude of job openings once they go home.
