Executive at the Board of Registered Nursing (BRN) “violated state law when they falsified data to deceive the State Auditor’s Office,” the auditor reported June 30.
Acting on a whistleblower complaint alleging that BRN executives intentionally manipulated the data used to create a report, the auditor investigated and found that three executives conceived and carried out a plan in late 2018 to manipulate data and provide a deliberately misleading report to the auditor.
The report falsely showed that BRN had decreased its investigators’ caseloads to satisfy a previous audit that found problems that allowed nurses who may pose a risk to patient safety to continue practicing.
The plan involved temporarily reassigning cases to various staff on paper, to make it appear that each investigator had a caseload of 20 or fewer investigations.
The executives’ actions obstructed the State Auditor from making a correct assessment regarding the status of the audit recommendation,” the auditor wrote. “The executives also demonstrated dishonesty by intentionally misrepresenting known facts, and their misdeeds brought discredit to BRN. The serious and egregious nature of the executives’ overall behavior regarding this matter constituted gross misconduct.”