Health violation reports muddled
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In July, after repeated delays, the Allegheny County Health Department made good on a promise to start posting restaurant inspection reports on its website. The public database was supposed to make inspections more transparent.
But the way the online system was set up, it obscures some of the worst food handling violations that inspectors discover. And it doesn't let the public know whether inspections are being performed on time.
The way it works, the health department keeps just one inspection report online at a time for each restaurant. When a new report comes in, the old one gets bumped. That policy ensures that the public never sees a bad inspection report, at least not for very long. Here's why.
When an inspector uncovers numerous serious violations, known as "critical" violations, the inspector typically returns for a reinspection in a matter of days or weeks to make sure the problems were fixed. When the problems are resolved, the inspector's all-clear report gets filed online, and the bad report that triggered the reinspection is removed.
That means restaurant patrons, who may be using the online reports to help them decide where to eat, may not get a complete picture of what inspectors found.
For example, the county database this week showed a report labeled a "reinspection" dated Nov. 17 for an Eat'n Park restaurant at 7370 McKnight Road in Ross. It listed one violation. The unsatisfactory report that had prompted the inspector to return to the restaurant wasn't available.
In Squirrel Hill, Aladdin's Eatery on Forbes Avenue was closed by the health department on June 2 for multiple critical violations, the types of conditions that pose a "significant public health risk," according to county regulations. But a check this week with the online database turned up only a report from a reinspection on June 3 that gave the restaurant the all-clear. The bad report that forced the restaurant to close a day earlier wasn't there.
The policy of posting only one report per restaurant also keeps the public from knowing how many times an inspector had to return to the facility before violations were corrected. Inspectors sometimes return multiple times before serious problems are fixed.
First Published December 3, 2010 12:00 am
