Kanawha-Charleston Health Department restaurant inspectors keep seeing the same violations: Workers forgetting to wear plastic gloves while handling ready-to-eat foods; employees failing to wash their hands; and perishables not being stored at cold-enough temperatures.

The violations keep piling up, but the problems never seem to get fixed.

"They go in and do an inspection, find a problem or two, it gets corrected, but you go back a few months later, and you find the same problem," said Dr. Kerry Gateley, health department director. "Over time, I don't see an overall improvement."

To that end, Gateley plans to shake up the county's restaurant inspection system.

He's organizing meetings with administrators and sanitarians to design a program that would prompt restaurants to enact changes and improve food safety and quality.

Gateley already is tossing out a few ideas.

For one, he wants inspections that are less predictable. Sanitarians now visit restaurants two to four times a year, depending on the size of the business. Inspectors normally evaluate restaurants during daytime hours on weekdays.

Gateley believes evening and weekend reviews might keep restaurants on their toes.

"Maybe predictability is not so good," Gateley said. "What if we shook things up?"

Another proposal: Assign a team of sanitarians to fan out across Kanawha County and look for the same violation at every restaurant.

Gateley also wants to examine whether the health department should go from a "paper-based" inspection program - sanitarians fill out forms and write comments for each restaurant - to an electronic system in which inspectors would carry computer tablets.

An electronic system would allow the health department to track violations in a database.

"It's a fairly radical change," Gateley said. "It's basically retraining the entire environmental health section. It's a big undertaking."

Gateley said the health department would continue to release restaurant inspection information to area newspapers, which publish lists of restaurants and the number of critical violations they receive.

The department also may start posting inspection reports on its Web site. Restaurants are required to post the reports on their premises, within easy viewing by customers.

The health department employs nine inspectors who review about 1,200 businesses serving food in Kanawha County.

"We should be shooting for consistent improvement," Gateley said. "If we manage to do that, it would be of interest to the rest of the state and rest of the country."

To contact staff writer Eric Eyre, use e-mail or call 348-4869.