Sex offender screening API for home health agencies
Your caregivers work alone in a client’s home. Screen every aide against all 58 US registries at hire and on a recurring cadence — from a dashboard your office staff can run, or the API inside your onboarding flow.
25 free searches, no card. $0.15 a call, no platform fee, no seats, no minimum. No code needed: search from your dashboard, or integrate the full API when you’re ready.
curl https://api.offendersearch.app/v1/search \ -H "X-API-Key: $OFFENDERSEARCH_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"query": {"firstName": "Ana", "lastName": "Torres", "dob": "1988-07-21", "ageTolerance": 1}}' // response { "status": "complete", "elapsedMs": 410, "counts": { "records": 0, "sourcesQueried": 58, "sourcesComplete": 58, "sourcesIncomplete": 0 }, "records": [] } // a match carries its reason { "matchState": "dob_match", "matchConfidence": 0.98, "matchBasis": ["lastName:exact", "firstName", "dob"] }
Making a hiring decision? Use an FCRA workflow.
If a result will help decide whether to hire someone, the check has to run as an FCRA-regulated consumer report, with a permissible purpose, consent, accuracy controls and a dispute path for the person. Our standard search and API are not a consumer report, and standard results are never used for that decision. FCRA workflows run through FCRA Partner Access, for background check companies and screening platforms under a written FCRA agreement.
FCRA pricing is quoted per partner, so contact us for pricing.
Screening challenges for home health agencies and private-duty operators
- Every visit puts a caregiver alone in a private home with a vulnerable client
- Families choose an agency on trust; one incident undoes years of referrals
- Aides and companions turn over quickly, and hiring can’t wait on slow checks
- Franchise networks need one consistent screen across every territory
What sex offender screening gives home health agencies and private-duty operators
Give families a screening story you can stand behind
Re-screen every active caregiver on a schedule
Hold every office and franchisee to one standard
Home Health sex offender check API: request and response. One POST per person, or the same search from the dashboard with no code.
curl https://api.offendersearch.app/v1/search \ -H "X-API-Key: $OFFENDERSEARCH_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"query": {"firstName": "Ana", "lastName": "Torres", "dob": "1988-07-21", "ageTolerance": 1}}' // response { "status": "complete", "elapsedMs": 410, "counts": { "records": 0, "sourcesQueried": 58, "sourcesComplete": 58, "sourcesIncomplete": 0 }, "records": [] } // a match carries its reason { "matchState": "dob_match", "matchConfidence": 0.98, "matchBasis": ["lastName:exact", "firstName", "dob"] }
Send what you have. Name and date of birth; age or birth year when that is all you hold. Date of birth drives matchState: dob_match, year_match, age_match or no_dob_age_year.
Read the counts. sourcesComplete against sourcesQueried says whether all 58 registries answered, so a partial search is never read as a clear one.
Branch on the score. matchConfidence and matchBasis on every record, with the registry cited.
| Person | Checked for | Result | Answered |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ana Torres | caregiver onboarding | No match | 58 / 58 |
| Jordan Sample | caregiver onboarding | Match · dob_match | 58 / 58 |
| J. Sample | caregiver onboarding | Review · year_match | 58 / 58 |
Read the API docs › · Search from the dashboard › · Screen a CSV without code ›
Sex offender screening built for home health. One key, one schema, one stored record of every check.
Screen at hire, in minutes
Office staff type a candidate’s name into the dashboard and get photographs, aliases, and the official registry record before the offer goes out — no IT involved.
Re-screen the active roster
Upload the caregiver roster as a CSV on your own cadence — monthly, quarterly, per contract — and every row runs as one stored search.
One standard across a franchise
Add teammates so every office runs the same check the same way, with a stored history of who was screened, when, and what came back.
When home health agencies and private-duty operators run a sex offender check. Each moment, and the call that fits it.
Before an aide’s first home visit
Home health aides work alone in patients’ homes, so screening comes before the first visit.
When an aide is assigned to a new patient
Particularly where children or memory-impaired adults live in the home.
For contractors and per-diem staff
Staffing agency and per-diem clinicians are screened like employees.
Across the active roster
Monitoring alerts you between credentialing cycles.
Home Health screening workflow. Step by step, from the first call to the stored record.
Start from your state’s licensing rule. Home health screening rules come from the state, not Medicare.
Search the 58 US registries by name and date of birth. Aides often lived and worked in another state.
Run criminal records on the same key. County, state and federal records for the look-back your state requires.
Decide through an FCRA workflow. Hiring decisions run as FCRA-regulated consumer reports.
Monitor the roster. Alerts arrive when a monitored aide’s status changes.
Home Health screening: what the law requires
Home health is the sector where the honest answer is least like the marketing. The care happens in a private home, unsupervised, with a vulnerable adult — the highest-risk configuration in the industry — and yet the federal Conditions of Participation are close to silent on screening. What governs is state law, payer contract and insurance, and knowing which of the three you are actually answering to changes what you should do.
Medicare’s home health conditions of participation (42 CFR 484.115) set aide qualification and training standards but contain no screening requirement, and the CMS National Background Check Program was a voluntary state grant that ended in 2024. Screening duties come from state licensing law, payer contracts and accreditation.
Some state laws are explicit. Florida’s Level 2 screening includes the sex offender registries of every state the employee lived in during the preceding five years (Fla. Stat. § 435.04). That multi-state scope is why a single search across all 58 registries suits home health, where aides commonly move between states.
| Jurisdiction | Citation | Applies to | What it requires |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florida | Fla. Stat. § 435.04 | Staff | Level 2 screening — which Florida applies across a range of health care roles — includes a search of the sexual predator and sexual offender registries of every state in which the employee resided during the preceding five years. |
| Federal | 42 CFR § 484.115 | Staff | The home health aide personnel requirement sets training and competency standards — and, notably, does not impose a criminal background or registry screening duty. |
And what it doesn’t
This is the correction worth making loudly, because the opposite is said constantly: the Medicare home health Conditions of Participation do not require you to run background checks on your aides. 42 CFR § 484.115 governs aide qualification through training and competency evaluation, not criminal history. Anyone telling you CMS mandates aide screening is mistaken. That does not make screening optional in practice — many states impose their own duty, most payers and franchisors require it by contract, and abuse-liability insurance frequently conditions cover on it. But you should know that your obligation almost certainly comes from your state, your contract or your insurer, and those are the documents to read.
Citations link to the primary text. This is background, not legal advice: obligations change, and your counsel is the right reader of your own facts.
Screening practices for home health agencies and private-duty operators. Record what you checked, not just what you found.
| NJ | New Jersey · answered | 0 |
| NY | New York · answered | 0 |
| PA | Pennsylvania · answered | 0 |
| FL | Florida · answered | 0 |
| TX | Texas · answered | 0 |
Find out which authority you are actually under. State licensure, payer contract and insurance carrier impose different duties with different scopes. Screening to satisfy an imagined federal rule tends to produce a policy that matches none of the three real ones.
Follow the aide’s residence history. Home care draws heavily on a mobile workforce. Florida’s five-year residence rule is the clearest statutory articulation of the general point: the search worth running is not bounded by your own state line.
Re-screen on a cadence, not on renewal. Aides often stay on a roster for years between credential events. A periodic sweep of the active roster catches what an at-hire check never will.
Screen the whole roster, including PRN and agency staff. Intermittent and contract caregivers reach the same homes as employees. A policy written around full-time hires leaves the most transient part of the workforce unscreened.
Registry and criminal records for home health, on one key. Most home health agencies and private-duty operators need more than one check, and running two vendors means two integrations, two contracts and two invoices.
Sex offender registry
58 US registries, continuously updated, with photographs, aliases, addresses and the official record citation on every match. 1.5M records in one schema.
Sex offender API ›Criminal records
1,408 county jail rosters, 53 state corrections systems, courts, warrants and federal custody, almost 50 million records in the same scored, source-cited schema. Same key, same price.
Criminal search API ›FCRA background checks
When a result decides a hire or a tenancy, the check runs as an FCRA order through FCRA Partner Access: consent, the check, disputes and adverse-action steps. Pricing is quoted per partner.
FCRA Partner Access ›Coverage today: 1,901 criminal jurisdictions catalogued, 1,554 live, 51 states + DC + federal. See what each state publishes, or the live list at /v1/criminal/sources.
A BAA before the first search
The check needs only a name and date of birth. Where you send protected health information, an account admin signs the Business Associate Agreement in the dashboard first, and every check is stored for the surveyor or the payer.
Compliance posture for a healthcare buyer
Business Associate Agreement. Signed by an account admin in the dashboard under Compliance, or scoped by counsel on request. HIPAA & BAA ›
Stored, exportable audit trail. Every search kept with query, timestamp, per-source outcome and reviewer. Trust & security ›
Team workspaces and access control. Admissions and HR in separate workspaces on an enterprise plan, net-30 or net-60 invoicing. Enterprise on pricing ›
Security review answered in writing. Questionnaires, data handling and subprocessors through the security contact. Contact ›
What home health screening costs per check. $0.15 a call, $0.11 past 2,000 a month. No platform fee, no seats, no minimum.
| Checks / month | Cost | Per check |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | $75.00 | $0.1500 |
| 5,000 | $630.00 | $0.1260 |
| 50,000 | $5,580.00 | $0.1116 |
A batch is billed per row, so bulk screening costs the same per person as a single lookup. No setup fee, no per-seat licence, no monthly minimum on search and no annual contract, so the price scales down with you as well as up. A fraction of what legacy screening platforms charge.
The background check API · screen a CSV without code. More for developers: the free background check API tier, pay-as-you-go background check API pricing, the employment screening API and tenant screening API, and the background check API in Python and background check API in Node.js tutorials.
Home Health screening FAQ
For anything else, talk to sales or read the API docs.
Can our office staff run this without technical help?
Yes. The dashboard is a search box: type a name, get the people who match with photographs and official registry records. The first 25 searches are free, with no payment method needed to start.
How do we re-screen the whole roster?
Export your active caregivers and upload the file as a CSV. Each row runs as one search with its own result, and the whole run is stored — a ready-made record for your compliance file.
Does it catch a caregiver who registered in another state?
Yes. Every search covers all 58 US registries — every state, DC and the territories — so out-of-state history surfaces in the same search.
Is this a background check / consumer report?
Not on the standard API: standard results are not a consumer report. FCRA-regulated use runs through FCRA Partner Access, a separately enabled service for approved consumer reporting agencies and screening platforms under a written FCRA agreement.
Related
Screen home health agencies and private-duty operators with one API
Your caregivers work alone in a client’s home. Screen every aide against all 58 US registries at hire and on a recurring cadence — from a dashboard your office staff can run, or the API inside your onboarding flow.