State-run home for disabled hired unlicensed medical directors

Clark Kauffman of the The Des Moines Register reports that a state-run home for profoundly disabled children and adults has employed nine unlicensed psychologists and two successive, unlicensed medical directors. State records show the medical directors — both of whom are gynecologists — were paid a total of $127,424 without either of them ever obtaining the Iowa medical licenses that would have enabled them to care for residents as specified in their job descriptions. Kauffman also reported that after one former doctor at the home was fired for abusing a resident, Iowa officials removed his name from the state’s registry of abusers in exchange for his promise to practice in another state.