Labor & Employment Law

Health Care Industry: DOL Intensified Focus Mandates More Awareness

By Mark Tabakman

In a recent posting in the Wage Hour Defense Blog, Kara Maciel brought attention to the new, intensified focus by the federal Department of Labor in auditing and inspecting health care facilities.  I represent a number of such facilities and have also noticed an uptick in such investigations, especially as concerns lunch breaks and rounding.  That post is at www.wagehourblog.com/2010/08/articles/wage-and-hour-policies/hospitals and nursing homes

As I have written about before, many health care employers (as well as others) have smart time clocks that automatically deduct thirty minutes every day for lunch.  As Kara notes, if the employee does any work during that otherwise automatically deducted period, the lunch period(s) may then be claimed to be working time.  Since patient care is a top priority and patients may and do need assistance and care at all times of the day, it is possible that employees may be interrupted during their lunch or claim that they are, even if the interruption is only for a moment, e.g. answering a question.

The difficulty of defending these claims is evident, as Kara notes.  Unless employers have built in fail-safe mechanisms to allow for the reporting and concomitant investigation of interrupted lunch claims, it will be virtually impossible to try to prove or disprove whether a certain employee actually took their full thirty minute lunch break on a day or days in the last two years.  I have advised creating a form for this contingency, placing it in boxes or containers by nursing stations or other central points and giving employees either in-service training on the procedure or otherwise documenting that employees are aware of the reporting procedure.  In that manner, employees can be properly compensated and the employer can adequately defend itself against years-later claims of unpaid working time.

The key is to be proactive.  Internal audits of compensation practices, especially those relating to exemption classification issues and working time issues, are essential. If a policy is problematic (or out rightly illegal) it should be changed immediately, so that any applicable statutes of limitations can start being eroded away.

'Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty,' said Thomas Jefferson.  It is also the price to pay for not being caught unawares in a FLSA collective and/or state law class action on issues that with careful planning and foresight could have been completely avoided.

 

Full post as published by Wage & Hour - Development & Highlights on August 31, 2010 (boomark / email).