The head of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association says a woman posing as a nurse without the training or certification, should have never been able to get into nine local healthcare facilities.
“What struck me - most importantly - was this was preventable,” Zach Shamberg tells Channel 11 News.
Zach Shamberg is the President and CEO of the Pennsylvania Health Care Association (PHCA). It’s an advocacy group that represents long-term care providers, workers and the residents they care for.
Police say Shannon Womack stole the identities of actual nurses and was able to work as a nurse in Pennsylvania and at least six other states, harming the most vulnerable people in our communities.
“It’s sickening,” Shamberg says. “It’s disturbing for other staff, for long-term care providers, most importantly for the residents that she worked with, that she served.”
He says the story of Shannon Womack is one his organization warned about.
“The fact that this woman could travel up and down the East Coast seeking and gaining employment tells you the system is obviously broken,” Shamberg added.
Police say Womack was able to create her own staffing agency, where she then awarded jobs to herself and stole drugs.
The PHCA advocated for House Bill 2293, legislation that was signed into law two years ago, allowing the State Department of Health to oversee staffing agency regulations. But Shamberg says the regulations haven’t even been written yet.
“We fought for this law, and we fought for this law to be enacted because we sensed something like this could happen,” Shamberg said. “That the system could be gamed, taken advantage of and unfortunately, that’s exactly what took place.”
Shamberg says after the guilty plea by serial killer nurse Heather Pressdee, who was able to bounce around from facility to facility, he pushed for the creation of a registry or database for health care facilities to flag providers.
“Where red flags could be raised or concerns could be raised without risk of provider liability,” Shamberg added. “The fact that she was placed on a do-not-retain list but was able to be hired over and over and over again speaks to a failure in the system.”
As Shamberg fights for the enforcement of our laws and accountability, State Police are looking into every death at the facilities where Womack worked to make sure none were the result of a lack of care.
“This woman was able to move so quickly,” Shamberg said. “The staffing agency model is you’re able to work one shift one day and go across the state and work a different shift for another facility. The biggest failure is the lack of communication amongst providers and it’s no fault of their own.”
Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
©2025 Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/XCUXZC2XYZHCRGNNGKFEX6U3LQ.png)
