* Background is here if you need it. Molly Parker, Lee Enterprises Midwest, and Beth Hundsdorfer, Capitol News Illinois, and ProPublica…

The watchdog for the Illinois Department of Human Services is seeking harsher penalties against health care workers who obstruct abuse and neglect investigations.

IDHS Inspector General Peter Neumer’s call to action comes on the heels of extensive reporting by Lee Enterprises, Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica last year that revealed a culture of abuse and cover-ups at Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center in rural southern Illinois. The news organizations detailed how uncooperative staff stymied the state’s ability to hold employees facing serious abuse allegations to account.

Specifically, Neumer is asking legislators for a change in law that would allow his office to report workers engaged in similar misconduct to an existing statewide registry. The move could bar those employees from working in the health care field in Illinois.

The Health Care Worker Registry monitors direct care aides, nursing assistants and other non-licensed health care officials; its database of professionals includes those who are barred from working with vulnerable populations. They may have been barred because of criminal records or if they have been found in an administrative proceeding to have engaged in financial exploitation, what is known as “egregious neglect” or physical and sexual abuse.

Under the current system, state workers who help their colleagues by lying to or misleading investigators can face termination if they’re caught, but findings against them can’t be reported to the registry. So short of criminal charges, which are rare, nothing would prevent them from going to work in another health care setting.

The Office of the Inspector General “regularly sees instances where facility or agency staff seek to protect each other from the consequences of their misconduct by remaining silent about what they witnessed or lying to protect their fellow employees,” Neumer wrote in a recently released annual report on his office’s work.

In a follow-up interview, Neumer said expanding his office’s authority would help deter employees from “engaging in cover-up behavior or code-of-silence activity if they were aware that by doing so they risked losing their employment and possibly their ability to work in the health care industry in Illinois.” […]

A spokesperson for House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch said he was “incredibly troubled” by the reports on Choate and is “closely reviewing” the inspector general’s recommendations.