It hopes to add reports for schools and tattoo parlors by the end of the year. The reports can be seen at www.ccchd.com/ccchd/get-records/inspections.html.
Posting that information holds the businesses accountable for their sanitation and will make consumers more aware of health issues at their favorite restaurants, county health workers said.
“It’s another set of eyes to hold us accountable and I welcome the online visibility,” said Scott Griffith, president and manager of area Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken restaurants.
The online reports were made possible through a statewide software program from the Ohio Department of Health. The district has planned the launch of the online system for more than a year.
The online information serves as a conversation between the health district and consumers, said Dustin Ratliff, a registered sanitarian with the district.
“It tells them what we’ve found when we go out and conduct our inspections and it shows that we are out there doing our job to protect the public,” he said.
Consumers rarely came into the health district office to request inspection reports in the past, Ratliff said, but online reports will be much easier to check.
Clark County sanitarians have discussed the online records with local restaurants for more than a year.
“Now that the operators know that the public is going to have access to the reports, they want to make sure that their facility is represented how they want it to be,” Ratliff said.
Sanitarians take tablet computers out in the field to do their reports, freeing up time previously spent writing and allowing workers to do more thorough interviews with establishments, he said.
The reports include violations listed as standard and critical, meaning more likely to cause a food born illness. The most repeated critical violation in the past year was for unclean cooking utensils, cited more than 140 times.
William Alavarez, one of the owners of Los Mariachis, 1815 E. Main St., said the online reports are good for consumers and that everyone should question restaurants’ practices.
“The public should insist on things that they don’t see is right,” he said. “Businesses love to hear that everything is great, but it’s more important for businesses to hear what’s not right so that we can fix that as well.”
Sara French of Springfield and her family dined at Los Mariachis for lunch Wednesday and she said she’ll look at the online reports because she is curious to see if there are violations at some of her favorite restaurants.
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