Minnesota Board of Nursing considers firing executive director after licensing, discipline delays

The Minnesota Board of Nursing set an emergency meeting Thursday to consider replacing its executive director amid complaints of delayed licensing approvals and disciplinary actions.

Kimberly Miller became director of the nursing board in August 2021 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. That crisis and the fall 2022 nursing strike flooded the board with licensure and temporary permit requests. But complaints and the board's own budget request suggested problems beyond those events.

While Miller "took the brunt of the COVID mess" her leadership resulted in multiple complaints from workers, many of whom quit, and even clashes with board members, said David Jiang, who resigned from the board in August 2022 to attend law school in California. Jiang in his resignation letter to Gov. Tim Walz faulted the board for a lack of oversight and allowing Miller to handle the staffing problems she helped create.

"It's been over a year since we've been aware of these issues, and its always been punted," Jiang said in an interview Wednesday.

The Star Tribune in January reported that nursing school graduates weren't getting cleared by the board to take their licensing exams, delaying their start dates at hospitals and clinics and contributing to the statewide nursing shortage.

ProPublica and KARE 11 in April reported on the board's delayed disciplinary actions that allowed nurses accused of dangerous practices to stay on the job. The two media outlets first reported on Tuesday that the board had scheduled the emergency meeting.

Internal documents provided by former nursing board staff showed that delays started with the use of a single, tightly controlled email account for multiple board activities. Questions and complaints to that inbox would sit for 30 to 60 days before they were assigned to appropriate board staff. In some cases, board staff would press nurses with second or third requests for information that had already been filed to the inbox.

The board's most recent biennial report showed that the time to resolve disciplinary complaints had increased to 250 days and that last June there were 320 complaints that remained unresolved after more than one year.

Eric Ray quit his job as a discipline program assistant shortly after Miller took charge of the board. In a recent email to the Star Tribune, he said the delays are even worse than reflected by the statistics. The timeline doesn't start until Miller codes complaints for investigations, Ray said, and many of those complaints sit for weeks in the board's inbox.

Ray said it "is truly alarming from a public safety standpoint" and that a handful of disciplinary cases remain unresolved after five years.

The Minnesota Office of Management and Budget had received and reviewed multiple complaints about Miller, but spokesperson Patrick Hogan said privacy laws prevented elaboration on them. Nursing board president Laura Elseth confirmed Thursday's meeting but said state privacy laws prevented her from discussing the "nature of complaints" against Miller.

Miller didn't immediately reply to a request for comment on Wednesday.

"The Board is not able to meet consumer and applicant expectations for timely licensure processing," the budget stated.