Littler’s Healthcare Employment Counsel blog provides timely broad-based coverage and insight by into critical issues and developments unique to employers in the healthcare industry. Written by lawyers in Littler’s Healthcare Practice Group, the blogs will include, among other topics, discussion of matters such as:
- Federal and state legislation and regulations impacting healthcare employers, such as nurse-patient ratio limitations, mandatory overtime requirements, and other similar proposed or enacted legislative developments.
- Significant cases regarding healthcare employment issues, including the large wage and hour class actions that have been targeting healthcare employers over the last few years. Our blogs will include not only a discussion of the claims in the cases, significant decisions, and settlements, but also will provide suggestions to reduce the risk of, or defend, similar types of cases.
- Labor Relations matters unique to the healthcare industry, such as union efforts to organize healthcare employees, developments relating to the national unions representing healthcare workers, significant NLRB rulings impacting healthcare employers, and collective bargaining issues and developments.
- Department of Labor initiatives and enforcement actions impacting healthcare employers, including efforts by the OFCCP to assert jurisdiction over hospitals that are federal subcontractors, requiring them to develop affirmative action plans and comply with other specific federal requirements.
- ADA compliance issues, such as providing accommodations to nurses and physical therapists who have lifting restrictions, and similar issues that pose unique challenges to hospitals and other healthcare providers.
- Discrimination issues unique to the healthcare industry, such as dealing with discriminatory patient preferences, and equal visitation and decision-making rights for patients’ same-sex partners.
- Safety matters, such as the increase in violence against healthcare employees, mandatory flu vaccination programs, and other similar requirements.
- Whistleblowers — and the retaliation claims that they may assert. The stiffer provisions of the False Claims Act relating to fraud in the healthcare industry, and the increased enforcement activity by the federal government, have resulted in an increase in whistleblower activity, which the blog covers.
- Wage and hour requirements and challenges to compliance in the healthcare industry.
- Unique issues relating to physicians, such as non-competes, physician-owned hospitals, physicians as employees, and dealing with disruptive physicians in the healthcare setting.
These are just some of the many employment-related topics addressed by the Healthcare Employment Counsel blog. We hope you will find it a useful and dynamic source, and we encourage you to contact any of our blog-writers or editorial board members with suggestions for topics of interest to you.